eMAG, the Amazon of Romania, invoices about two billion by offering millions of products in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria. Marco Veruggio talked about the labor organization and its history with a worker who asked for guarantees on the protection of his anonymity. We publish this interview as part of our effort to understand the challenges that platform workers face.
Bad money drives out good money: it is a law of economics that can also be applied to labor. Amazon’s labor organization, for example, has driven the emergence of a series of clone companies across the world, which have slavishly copied the American giant’s labor organization and occupied the e-commerce market where it decided not to establish its distribution network. These include Mercado Libre in Latin America and since 2001 the Romanian group Emag, which on its platform offers millions of products to people living in Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria and since 2019, thanks to a partnership with Extreme Digital, has been selling electronic devices made in Romania to customers in Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. Over the past few years, the marketplace that allows third-party companies to sell through Emag’s platform, which generated revenues of nearly two billion euros in 2021, has been attracting the attention of Italian companies as well: Barilla, Campari, Moretti, Mutti, and Rummo are some of the food brands on the virtual store.
In Romania, Emag took advantage of the vacuum left by Amazon, which does not offer e-commerce services there, but since 2005 has opened development centers in Iași, Bucharest, and Timișoara, hiring around 4,000 employees for R&D. Romania is, in fact, a reservoir of low-cost skilled labor, particularly in IT sector. However, last year, news spread about the possible closure of Amazon’s machine learning services, with the potential 400 redundancies. The climate of fear among workers is so strong that an employee at the Iași office, who initially agreed to a written interview to protect his identity, withdrew at the last minute for fear of retaliation by the company. We had better luck with a technician from an Emag subsidiary, a supplier of telephony equipment, who also agreed to a written interview. It is difficult to grasp the essence of things in a written interview, but one of the interesting aspects that seems to emerge. Anyway, what the answers reveal seems to be that low wages allow Emag to avoid significant investments in technology to bring the value chain upstream of the warehouse to maximum efficiency, and that nevertheless, some steps towards greater efficiency are already underway.
What about Emag.ro? Is it correct to say that it is a sort of Amazon’s clone?
Yes, its ambitions, which have been rapidly matterializing, is to take over the e-commerce market in eastern and southern europe.
Tell me something about your job and more in general about working conditions, wages etc.
I work as a technician for Flip.ro, a subsidiary company who is majority owned by the emag group, our business model is to purchase used and broken mobile phones, mainly iphones, and fix them with parts bought in bulk from shenzen china then re-sell as a refurbished finished product in Greece,Bulgaria,Hungary and Romania. Working conditions were better when I first joined the company last year compared to my experience in the field, however they have begun rapidly degrading as the emag group started to accentuate the rate of exploitation attempting to cut costs by using cheaper parts or skipping using some entierly, and by offering incentives to work overtime as well as increased bonuses for higher output. Wages are a little above average however most of my coworkers with any amount of experience are getting around 20-25% of their paycheck in bonus pay, some months even 50%.
In general, are working conditions better than in other companies or not?
My experience was at a medium-sized company where we were working with suppliers in china for original parts and tools however often times we had to improvise solutions to finish a repair or we were facing significant delays in the delivery of needed parts. As stated previously conditions were better initially but have degraded with time and now are at an all-time low which is a consensus among my coworkers across all types of seniority.
Which kind of workers choose to work for Emag.ro: young people, immigrants, women?
The entierty (99%) of my department is young men from 20-30 years old with varying class and educational backgrounds. In other departments, specifically the “Front” which deals with cleaning and sanitizing the phone after it has been repaired making it presentable for selling, and also with the lowest paying jobs in the firm, is mostly young people including women and more recently the company started hiring nepalese workers which are generally ostracized by my coworkers in the firm.
What about labor organisation?
We’re starting to implement the kaizen philosophy which results in an intensification of exploitation. Our conditions are more like that of a factory, receiving an unfinished product and trough our labour making a finished one ready for selling. As opposed to a regular service where a client comes with a phone that has an issue, we fix it, and then return it. Over here we’re building inventory so if orders come we can sell that particular model. Also holidays and events where people give gifts are very stressful since we’re meant to produce a lot more to sell.
What are the main problems in your workplace? Are you unionized or at least have you ever discussed the idea of joining a union?
The main problem overall is of course the poor pay, people are noticing the skills they are building here are better rewarded elsewhere however there hasn’t yet been a mass exodus of people quitting and going to another company as has happened where I worked before. In my department which is the Technical one where we physically repair the phones the biggest issue has been the poor organisation of the warehouse department and the lack of tools, consumables and other things which make life harder for us. The intensification of work has also been felt, we’re expected to repair around 30 phones each every day which is taxing for many of my coworkers. I’ve been in talks with a coworker from a different department regarding starting a union and have invited him to chat with myself and other colleagues and activists, however that has failed to materialize so far. I’m still trying to get this meeting to happen and start organizing a union.
