Hundreds of Amazon workers at the company’s vast warehouse in Coventry hope to make history next week by becoming the first in the UK to vote for strike action against the delivery giant, which refuses to engage with unions.
Workers at the site, on land formerly occupied by Jaguar Land Rover, staged an informal walkout earlier this year, after being told their annual pay rise would be 50p an hour, taking the basic rate to £10.50.
With the backing of the GMB union, they have now become the first Amazon workers in the UK to take part in a formal ballot for strike action, demanding £15 an hour.
“It’s about making a stand for the workers,” said senior GMB organiser, Amanda Gearing. “This is not something that we’ve said, ‘you’ve got to do this’. This is them saying, ‘we want to be able to take a protest that the management will listen to’.”
Staff – called “associates” by Amazon – describe being obliged to stand throughout 10-hour shifts, and subjected to rigorous targets.
If the ballot results in a vote for industrial action, they are poised to set strike dates for the key pre-Christmas period.
GMB members at the firm’s Doncaster warehouse are balloting simultaneously, and would coordinate any action with Coventry, though the union concedes its recruitment drive there is at an earlier stage.
Amazon is facing mounting pressure worldwide, from workers fighting for better pay and conditions.
Derrick Palmer, vice president of the Amazon Labor Union, which recently won a recognition battle at an Amazon fulfilment centre in Staten Island, New York, joined the Coventry workers at an online rally on Tuesday.
Describing Amazon’s anti-union tactics, including sending staff text messages and emails urging them not to sign up, he said, “we kept pushing on, because we knew that Amazon wasn’t going to stop.
“We knew we had to do something unorthodox, something unheard of, to beat a giant like Amazon. Collectively we made a lot of noise and we stuck together through thick and thin, and ultimately that was how we were able to defeat them.”
Former US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders also sent a message of solidarity to the activists.
Unions in mainland Europe have also been organising inside Amazon, and are keeping a close eye on developments in the UK.
“For us it’s very important that there is coordination, collaboration, between Amazon workers across Europe and worldwide,” said André Scheer, of the giant German union Verdi.
“It could be stronger: we wish that we could organise an international strike day, but it’s very difficult to organise, because the legislation in every country is different.”
German Amazon workers have repeatedly been on strike over pay and conditions – timing one recent stoppage to coincide with a public holiday in Poland so the firm could not simply transfer the work across the border.
The spontaneous stoppage at the Coventry centre in August, which saw frustrated staff congregate in the canteen during working hours, coincided with similar action in other fulfilment centres, at locations including Tilbury, in Essex, and Rugeley, in Staffordshire.
The wave of protests followed Amazon management’s announcement of pay increases of less than £1 an hour – 50p, in the case of Coventry workers. Staff say they felt particularly frustrated, having worked throughout the Covid pandemic.
“They felt undervalued; it made them angry,” says the GMB’s Gearing. The union has been working alongside Amazon staff in the UK for almost a decade, in the face of the company’s resolute rejection of unions.
Since the union began organising, staff have reported stricter enforcement of workplace rules, while a bus has been laid on to take workers directly into the fulfilment centre, bypassing GMB recruiters at the gates.
About 300 of the fulfilment centre’s 1,400 or so staff took part in the consultative ballot that was the precursor to the current poll. (Hundreds more staff are employed there during the busiest times of year).
Gearing acknowledges that is a relatively low percentage of the total workforce, but scores it as an achievement in the face of Amazon’s determination not to engage. Of those who voted, 97% said they were prepared to take industrial action.
The company has recently announced a £500 cost-of-living payment, in two tranches of £250. A message to staff seen by the Guardian warns that the second payment will be, “dependent on no unauthorised absence between 22 November [2o]22 and 24 December [2o]22”.
GMB believes this may constitute unlawful inducement not to strike, and has instructed solicitors to take legal action. Amazon insists the payment, which applies to all its UK staff, is unrelated to any potential industrial action.
Coventry North West Labour MP Taiwo Owatemi backs the workers’ fight, and told the Guardian she would support them taking strike action if they decide to do so, after hearing about their experiences at a recent roundtable.
“I understand how much they have been trying to engage with Amazon and I know how difficult it is for the staff to actually make that decision. Everybody deserves to work in a workplace that respects them and values them,” she said.
A spokesperson for Amazon said, “starting pay for Amazon employees has increased to a minimum of between £10.50 and £11.45 per hour, depending on location. This represents a 29% increase in the minimum hourly wage paid to associates since 2018”.
The spokesman also highlighted the £500 cost of living payment, and added that employees are also offered a “comprehensive benefits package” that is “worth thousands of pounds annually”.
