It is decision day tomorrow (July 14) for union plans to spread strike action against the world’s second largest retailer Amazon- the company that billionaire Jeff Bezos built.
Strike is solid over £15-an-hour.
More than 900 members of the GMB union – out of a workforce of 2700 – went on strike on Prime Day at Amazon’s distribution centre at Coventry. The union claims the strike is solid.
The union wants recognition and £15-an-hour minimum pay in these difficult times when the cost of living is soaring. Amazon counters that it does regularly review and increase its hourly pay rate.
Union solidarity on the rise.
Picket lines and grievances at the Coventry distribution centre appear to be feeding union solidarity. The union claims it has seen a surge in membership at the Coventry site – to around 1000 members – since the strike began on July 11. It claims there were queues as people signed up for the union in a boost to its plans to spread strike action.
Crucial vote tomorrow.
Tomorrow the union will know whether the staff at the Amazon warehouse in Rugeley, Staffordshire, will join in with industrial action. The warehouse employs 1200 workers and is a key link in the delivery chain that gets parcels to your door.
“The ballot will close at 12, but we have to wait for the independent scrutiniser to collate the results and confirm them. There’s no set time for this, but it will usually get to us no earlier than 4 PM,” says Stuart Richards, a senior regional organiser for GMB.
Strike will spread – union.
Either way, Richards says, the union plans to spread strike action.
“We’ll be meeting with our activists over the next few days to set the next strike action for Coventry and hopefully Rugeley,” he says.
The 500,000-strong union agrees with Amazon that the strike action this week is unlikely to disrupt parcel deliveries, but believes that it could hit the company in the pocket as parcels are diverted to other centres, at the cost of overtime payments.
We contacted Amazon for its side of the story and this was the emailed response.
In terms of how Amazon has dealt with the strike, there’s no change as per the earlier response: ‘There will be no disruption to customers. Our Coventry site does not directly serve customer orders’” the company said.
Historic strikes at Amazon this year
The union claims the strikes this year were the first in the history of Amazon’s operations in the United Kingdom.
GMB complains that Amazon is ignoring the strike in the hope that it will go away . WIth more and wider strike action planned by the union at the company – it is highly unlikely that it will go away any time soon.
