Amazon: Coventry workers balloted for strike action in UK first
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
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