Labour union urges European authorities to widen Amazon antitrust probe after Reuters story By Reuters

By Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A worldwide commerce union for the companies sector on Friday urged European authorities to widen their antitrust investigation of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:) to evaluate if the corporate engaged in creating knockoff items and rigging search outcomes on its platform.

The demand by the UNI World Union was triggered by a Reuters report final week based mostly on inner Amazon paperwork that confirmed the e-commerce firm ran a scientific marketing campaign of copying merchandise and manipulating search outcomes to spice up its personal non-public manufacturers corresponding to AmazonBasics in India, a key progress markets.

In a letter dated Oct. 22 to the European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen, and likewise marked to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, the union physique’s European arm stated authorities there should examine if Amazon engaged in “equally damaging behaviour throughout the European Union.”

“As additional revelations of the size of Amazon’s operations to undermine that stage taking part in subject floor, additional motion is required to make sure it’s held accountable at each flip,” the letter, seen by Reuters, stated. It cited the Reuters story.

Spokespersons for Amazon and the European Fee didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

The union physique has been a vocal critic of Large Tech’s enterprise practices world wide. UNI Europa says it represents about 7 million employees and counts a number of firms’ labour unions amongst its members, together with these representing warehouse workers of Amazon in Spain, Germany, France and Italy.

The European authorities are already investigating Amazon’s place as each a market for retailers and a rival vendor.

Final 12 months, the Fee accuse the U.S. firm of utilizing its measurement, energy and information to realize an unfair benefit over smaller retailers that promote on its on-line platform. On the time, Amazon stated the corporate represents lower than 1% of the worldwide retail market and there are bigger retailers in each nation it operates in.

The Amazon paperwork reviewed by Reuters confirmed how the corporate’s private-brands staff in India secretly exploited inner information from its India unit to repeat merchandise bought by different firms, then supplied them on its platform. The corporate additionally promoted gross sales of its non-public manufacturers by rigging search outcomes on its India platform, the paperwork confirmed.

In response to the report, Amazon stated it believes “these claims are factually incorrect and unsubstantiated.” The corporate didn’t elaborate. The corporate stated the way in which it shows search outcomes would not favour private-brand merchandise.

After the Reuters story was printed final week, 5 members of the U.S. Home Judiciary committee wrote to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, accusing the corporate’s high executives of both deceptive Congress or presumably mendacity to it about Amazon’s enterprise practices.

U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a outstanding critic of Amazon, known as for breaking apart the corporate after the report, whereas in India, a gaggle representing hundreds of thousands of brick-and-mortar retailers has requested the federal government to take motion towards Amazon.