Amazon UK workers to hold first strike later this month

Workers at an Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) warehouse in Coventry, UK have announced a date for the first ever UK strike against the company, which has been launched due in protest over pay.  The walkout is to take place on 25 January, with further dates to be announced in the coming weeks after more than 98% of workers at the Lyon’s Park site voted to strike. Staff at the US£900bn tech company’s fulfilment centre voted to walk out after a pay offer of 50p per hour was made, with a ballot of workers closing just before Christmas.

In August, Amazon employees at the Coventry warehouse held a two-day protest, and informal demonstrations were also held at Amazon sites in Swindon in Wiltshire and Tilbury in Essex. The GMB union noted that Amazon UK paid “just GBP10.8 million in tax in 2021” after recording a pre-tax profit of GBP204mln and its UK revenues jumping to GBP20.6bn during the pandemic. Amanda Gearing, a senior organiser at the trade union, said: “Amazon workers in Coventry are set to make history on 25 January, becoming the first ever Amazon workers in the UK to go on strike. They’ve shown they’re willing to put themselves on the line to [fight] for what’s right. 

“But people working for one of the most valuable companies in the world shouldn’t have to threaten strike action just to win a wage they can live on.” She said the union was urging Amazon UK bosses to “give workers a proper pay rise and avoid industrial action altogether”. Amazon has said its hourly rate was increased to GBP11.45, depending on location, with “comprehensive benefits” to staff, with the pay rise from GBP10.50 representing “a 29% increase in the minimum hourly wage paid to Amazon associates since 2018”.

The company, which has made its founder Jeff Bezos one of the richest men in the world, reportedly hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency as recently as December 2020 to monitor European workers seeking to unionise. 

The Private Eye magazine has reported that Amazon’s in-house communications app contains a list of banned words, including “union”, “grievance”, “pay raise”, “slave”, “master”, “fairness” and “ethics”.

Despite the company’s intense animosity to unions, an Amazon warehouse on New York’s Staten Island was the first ever to successfully vote to unionise last year, while those attempting to form a second union elsewhere have reported feeling “threatened and intimidated“.