Amazon workers at a large warehouse in Coventry will go on a historic walkout on Wednesday, the first time the delivery giant’s UK operations have been hit by industrial action.
The immediate cause of the dispute was a 50p-an-hour pay raise offered to warehouse staff in the summer, which many found insulting, especially having worked during the covid pandemic.
But staff also complain about grueling 24-hour work shifts and constant, fussy supervision by management.
A worker recently told the guardian that it was impossible to make ends meet without hiring a 60-hour week. “I don’t want Jeff Bezos’s boat,” he said. “I definitely don’t want his rocket. But I just want to live.”
It’s a story heard in campaigns by Amazon workers around the world, including in the US, where there have been some notable recent successes in gaining union recognition.
Derrick Palmer, vice president of the Amazon Workers Union of America, which recently won a battle for recognition at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York, backed this week’s action in Coventry.
Local Labor MP Taiwo Owatemi is also behind it, having heard the experiences of workers at the warehouse, which is on a site previously occupied by the carmaker Jaguar Land Rover.
The company says it is relaxed about the walkout, insisting that the strikers represent a small proportion of its workforce in Coventry, and that their action will have little or no impact on its operations. It also points to a £500 cost-of-living payment offered to all staff over the busy Christmas period.
Amazon is right about the numbers: The GMB union has signed up about 300 members at the Coventry site and estimates total staff at 1,400 or more.
However, the union sees Wednesday’s action as a historic step in a 10-year battle to organize inside Amazon warehouses across the UK, in the face of well-documented hostility from the company towards unions.
GMB’s demand for £15 an hour pay seems blunt, to say the least. It says its members are currently paid £10.50 an hour, so that would be a 45% increase. And unlike thousands of nurses, doctors, teachers or machinists, the industrial action of these 300 warehouse workers is unlikely to have an impact on anyone’s daily life.
The economic backdrop has also darkened since the union first began organizing last summer: Retail sales fell 1% by volume in December, underscoring the difficult challenges facing the sector.
Amazon recently announced plans to close three UK warehouses as well as seven smaller delivery sites, putting 1,300 jobs at risk.
But GMB members hope they can draw public attention to the conditions facing some of those whose work lies behind the brown cardboard packages that arrive daily on doorsteps across the UK.
Stuart Richards, the GMB organizer for the West Midlands, says that since the results of the Coventry strike vote were announced in December, the union has been listening to a growing number of frustrated workers at other Amazon facilities, keen to make your voice heard.
He highlights the lengths to which the company appears to have gone to thwart efforts to organize its staff, saying the Coventry depot has become a “mini-fortress” compared to other facilities, with CCTV and security guards. The company says these are standard security precautions and all visitors to Amazon sites must be escorted.
“I’ve been involved in the union for about 25 years and I’ve never come across an employer that simply refuses to engage in any kind of commitment,” he says. “Ultimately, the real goal is to get one step closer to dragging Amazon bosses, kicking and screaming, into talking to us.”
