Google Makes New Offer to Settle Its European Union Antitrust Case

BRUSSELS — Google made a second try last week to settle a three-year-old antitrust case with the European Union, officials said. Neither side released details of the offer, however, and rivals continued to call for the American technology company to cede more control of its Internet search and advertising business.

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The latest offer by Google was acknowledged in Italy on Sunday by Joaquín Almunia, the European Union’s competition commissioner. Mr. Almunia has been seeking a settlement with the company since the early stages of the case, which formally began in 2010. The case revolves around claims that Google has abused its dominance in the Internet search and advertising field by, among other things, favoring its own products and services in search results. Google powers 90 percent of searches in many European markets; its share in the United States is closer to 70 percent.

“Once we have completed our analysis, once we will check that these new proposals are able to eliminate our concerns, we will tell Google what to do,” Mr. Almunia, referring to the offer, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Mr. Almunia is under mounting pressure from Google’s rivals seeking to prolong its legal entanglements in Europe and toughen the terms of any deal.

In July, he was forced to reject a preliminary settlement struck with Google after industry groups complained that aspects of the deal could strengthen, rather than loosen, Google’s hold in Europe. That proposal, the result of Google’s first offer of a settlement, would not have required the company to change the algorithm, or formula, that produces its search results. But it would have been the first time Google had agreed to legally binding changes to its search results, and it went much further than the minor concessions it made to settle a case before the United States Federal Trade Commission.

The latest proposal by Google addressed Mr. Almunia’s “areas of concern,” Al Verney, a spokesman for the company in Europe, said on Monday. “We continue to work with the commission to settle this case,” said Mr. Verney, who declined to describe the contents of the offer.

Mr. Almunia said over the weekend that he would prefer a swiftly negotiated settlement with Google because that would be a better way of regulating the fast-moving technology sector. But he said he could still issue formal charges against the company if a deal failed to materialize.

With the case still open, Google faces a serious challenge in Europe, where it risks far-reaching orders demanding it change its business practices and potentially a fine of up to $5 billion.

Leaders of industry groups said that the latest offer by Google should be carefully tested in the marketplace to assure that the remedies addressed complaints that the company favored its own products in search results.

“We must hope after so much prevarication that this time Google’s proposals represent a genuine attempt to address the concerns identified,” said David Wood, the legal counsel for Icomp, an industry group backed by Microsoft and a number of other companies. The previous proposals were, he said, “manifestly defective.”

In Germany, a Union Culture Clashes With Amazon’s Labor Practices

But across the Atlantic — nein, non, no.

Even as President Obama spoke about middle-class jobs last week at an Amazon warehouse in Tennessee, Amazon was facing strikes at warehouses in Germany, its second-biggest market. Unions there say the company has imported American-style business practices — in particular, an antipathy to organized labor — that stand at odds with European norms.

“In Germany, the idea that warehouse workers are going to be getting opposition from an employer when it comes to the right to organize, that’s virtually unheard-of,” said Marcus Courtney, a technology and communications department head at Uni Global Union, a federation of trade unions based in Nyon, Switzerland. “It puts Amazon out in left field.”

Amazon is hardly out there alone, however. Large American technology companies are increasingly running into obstacles as they expand in Europe. For Facebook and Google, the running issue is privacy. Google was fined this year by German authorities for illegally collecting personal data while creating its Street View mapping service, after facing minimal sanctions over Street View at home. Meanwhile, European privacy regulators are considering tough regulations to protect consumers on the Internet, a direct challenge to Google, Facebook and other online companies that mine personal data.

Antitrust officials in Europe are scrutinizing Apple’s relationships with wireless carriers, as well as Google’s competitive practices. And Google, Apple and Amazon have all been criticized by European lawmakers for tactics that help them minimize their tax bills.

Amazon has been criticized for its working conditions in the United States — but not nearly to the same extent as in Europe. On the surface, Amazon’s labor problems in Germany revolve around wages.

The union says workers in warehouses in two small German cities are properly classified as retail employees, and should be paid at the higher rate required for people who work in department stores and other retail outlets. Amazon says they are more properly classified as warehouse workers, and paid at a lower rate.

The subtext, though, is Amazon’s opposition to unions in its warehouses as a general principle, because the company fears unions will slow down the kind of behind-the-scenes innovation that has propelled its growth.

Dave Clark, the company’s vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, says Amazon views unions as intermediaries that will want to have a say on everything from employee scheduling to changes in processes for handling and packaging orders. Amazon prizes its ability to quickly introduce changes like these into its warehouses to improve the experience of its customers, he said.

Last year, the company spent $775 million to buy a manufacturer of robots that it plans to eventually deploy in its warehouses, though it has not said when they would come to Germany. The last thing it wants is to have to get approval from unions for such changes.

“This really isn’t about higher wages,” Mr. Clark said. “It isn’t a cost question for us. It’s about what our relationship is with our people.”

“We’re still a developing industry,” he added — despite the fact that Amazon posted revenue of $15.7 billion in the last quarter and the company is enjoying a buoyant stock price.

In the United States, Amazon successfully thwarted efforts to unionize. Over a decade ago, Mr. Courtney of Uni Global led an unsuccessful effort in the company’s home state of Washington to organize Amazon’s customer service representatives.

Two years ago, an investigative article by The Morning Call newspaper in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley chronicled poor working conditions in an Amazon warehouse in the state, including instances where it stationed paramedics outside to take heat-stressed workers to the emergency room. Amazon says it has addressed the problem by installing air-conditioning in all of its facilities.

More recently, a firm that provides temporary employees for Amazon warehouses is defending itself in a class-action suit that claims the firm shortchanged workers on pay as they waited in security lines to exit warehouses.

Jonathan Barnes, a spokesman for the staffing firm named in the suit, Integrity Staffing Solutions, declined to comment.

But it is a different story in Germany, where the powerful labor movement behind the Amazon strikes traces its roots back more than two centuries.

Mr. Courtney, the Swiss-based head of the federation of trade unions, said other American tech giants, including I.B.M. and Hewlett-Packard, have been more tolerant than Amazon of unions in their European operations.

And the strikes in Germany raise especially knotty problems for the company, which has ambitious expansion plans there.

AT&T and Union Reach Tentative Pacts for 2 Units

AT&T announced this weekend that it had reached tentative three-year contracts with a union representing more than 13,000 workers in its Midwest division and an additional 5,700 workers at a unit specializing in major corporate accounts.

The union, the Communications Workers of America, applauded the agreements, saying they did not contain the deep concessions many American companies are demanding.

In a statement about the tentative settlements, AT&T said: “The three-year agreements include wage increases in each year and a modest pension increase. Health care benefits remain among the best in the country.”

The union released a statement that said the tentative contract for workers in the Midwest “provides for wage increases, improvements in employment security and improvements in work and job issues, limits on forced overtime and changes to unfair attendance policies.”

The union said it would not disclose the percentage of the raises because it had not yet explained details to its members. Candice Johnson, a union spokeswoman, said ratification of the contract was expected in a few weeks.

The union’s Midwest division issued a statement that praised the tentative deal and said its negotiating team had made “some real improvements for our members and held back most of the company’s plans to take away hard-fought gains we had won over the years.”

In recent months, the union held several protests over what it called AT&T’s push to shift more health insurance costs to union members.

AT&T and the communications workers said they were still seeking to reach new contracts for three other divisions, including AT&T West, the former Pacific Bell, which has 18,000 union members in California and Nevada. The union is also seeking to reach a new deal with AT&T East in Connecticut, with 4,000 members.

Contracts for those two units expired on April 7, as was the case at AT&T Midwest and at AT&T Corp., the division handling big corporate accounts, like Internet services.

The company and union are also seeking to negotiate a contract for 24,000 AT&T workers in the Southeast — their contract expires on Aug. 4. Because the old Baby Bells had separate union agreements, the various regional union contracts often have different expiration dates.

In contrast to the talks involving AT&T, Verizon’s negotiations with its two main unions — the communications workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — have dragged on more than a year.

On Thursday, the unions asked the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to provide a mediator to help the stalled negotiations. The two unions represent roughly 45,000 Verizon workers from New England to Virginia.

Last August, those employees went on strike for two weeks, before returning to work under the terms of their old contract, which expired on Aug. 6.

Union officials said at the time that they had called the strike because they felt Verizon was not taking them seriously and because the company was seeking large concessions, including a pension freeze for current workers, fewer sick days and far larger employee contributions toward health coverage.

Separately, the Communications Workers of America announced on Saturday that Seth Rosen, the vice president in charge of the union’s District 4, covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, drowned in an accident on Friday in North Carolina. They said Mr. Rosen, 55, who also oversaw the union’s organizing efforts, died when he was swept away by the undertow at Ocracoke, part of the Outer Banks.

Calling the death a “tragic loss,” Larry Cohen, the union’s president, said, “His commitment to every aspect of our union life cannot be matched.”

Ms. Johnson, the spokeswoman, said, “Seth Rosen laid out the goal that every worker would be better off financially at the end of this contract than they’d be at the beginning.”

AT&T and Union Reach Tentative Pacts for 2 Units

AT&T announced this weekend that it had reached tentative three-year contracts with a union representing more than 13,000 workers in its Midwest division and an additional 5,700 workers at a unit specializing in major corporate accounts.

The union, the Communications Workers of America, applauded the agreements, saying they did not contain the deep concessions many American companies are demanding.

In a statement about the tentative settlements, AT&T said: “The three-year agreements include wage increases in each year and a modest pension increase. Health care benefits remain among the best in the country.”

The union released a statement that said the tentative contract for workers in the Midwest “provides for wage increases, improvements in employment security and improvements in work and job issues, limits on forced overtime and changes to unfair attendance policies.”

The union said it would not disclose the percentage of the raises because it had not yet explained details to its members. Candice Johnson, a union spokeswoman, said ratification of the contract was expected in a few weeks.

The union’s Midwest division issued a statement that praised the tentative deal and said its negotiating team had made “some real improvements for our members and held back most of the company’s plans to take away hard-fought gains we had won over the years.”

In recent months, the union held several protests over what it called AT&T’s push to shift more health insurance costs to union members.

AT&T and the communications workers said they were still seeking to reach new contracts for three other divisions, including AT&T West, the former Pacific Bell, which has 18,000 union members in California and Nevada. The union is also seeking to reach a new deal with AT&T East in Connecticut, with 4,000 members.

Contracts for those two units expired on April 7, as was the case at AT&T Midwest and at AT&T Corp., the division handling big corporate accounts, like Internet services.

The company and union are also seeking to negotiate a contract for 24,000 AT&T workers in the Southeast — their contract expires on Aug. 4. Because the old Baby Bells had separate union agreements, the various regional union contracts often have different expiration dates.

In contrast to the talks involving AT&T, Verizon’s negotiations with its two main unions — the communications workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — have dragged on more than a year.

On Thursday, the unions asked the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to provide a mediator to help the stalled negotiations. The two unions represent roughly 45,000 Verizon workers from New England to Virginia.

Last August, those employees went on strike for two weeks, before returning to work under the terms of their old contract, which expired on Aug. 6.

Union officials said at the time that they had called the strike because they felt Verizon was not taking them seriously and because the company was seeking large concessions, including a pension freeze for current workers, fewer sick days and far larger employee contributions toward health coverage.

Separately, the Communications Workers of America announced on Saturday that Seth Rosen, the vice president in charge of the union’s District 4, covering Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, drowned in an accident on Friday in North Carolina. They said Mr. Rosen, 55, who also oversaw the union’s organizing efforts, died when he was swept away by the undertow at Ocracoke, part of the Outer Banks.

Calling the death a “tragic loss,” Larry Cohen, the union’s president, said, “His commitment to every aspect of our union life cannot be matched.”

Ms. Johnson, the spokeswoman, said, “Seth Rosen laid out the goal that every worker would be better off financially at the end of this contract than they’d be at the beginning.”