Amazon, the first employee strike in the UK

However, the way the union has managed to cut through the bureaucracy in Coventry has piqued the interest of Amazon employees around the world, who are looking to organize a global movement to challenge the giant ofecommerce. The UK is Amazon’s third largest market (after the US and Germany) and unions see it as a key cog in Amazon’s mission. internationalization of the employee movement of the company. “I know they are watching us“says Westwood, who says he has received messages of support from France and Germany.

Workers in these countries know they will be more likely to force Amazon to the negotiating table if unions in several countries organize simultaneous strikes. “Amazon is an international company and responds to strikes in one country by relying on fulfillment centers in another“, says André Scheer, secretary of the German trade union The Greens. When Amazon workers go on strike in Germany, customer packages arrive in the country from neighboring Poland or the Czech Republic.

The Coventry strike comes the same week that Amazon employees in Germany, Poland, Canada, the US, France and Spain They gathered in Geneva to plan more protests. According to Uni Global, an international trade union involved in the #MakeAmazonPay campaign, unions are trying to capitalize on the success of coordinated protests against Amazon on Black Friday of November, organized in more than thirty countries, from Costa Rica to Luxembourg.

The Coventry strike isn’t the first time UK Amazon employees have publicly complained about working conditions and pay. In August 2022, workers from the company’s warehouses all over the country took part in unofficial protests in the canteens. Compared to other nations, however, trade union initiatives in the UK started late: i Amazon workers in central Germany have been organizing strikes for a decade, while in April 2022 a Staten Island warehouse became the first Amazon site in the United States to unionize.

Currently employees at the Coventry warehouse are paid around £10.50 ($11.95) per hour. The union that represents them, the Gmb, is asking for a increase to £15 an hour (€17.06), which would equal the salary of British workers to that of their colleagues in the United States. Amazon Regional Director Neil Travis calls the company’s pay competitive, in line with or above that of similar jobs locally. However, many Amazon employees have continued to work even during the pandemic — a period that has seen the company triple its quarterly profits — and argue they deserve a pay raise.

Productivity and surveillance

Today the long days of work continue to be burdensome for Westwood. The man says that – after more than three years spent moving pallets inside the Coventry warehouse – his shoulder hurts at night. But the 57-year-old is also worried managerial culture within Amazon: “The way executives treat people is shocking”. Westwood reports that he was recently reprimanded for leaning against a wall to catch his breath. In response to his objection – “We are not in the army!” – his manager told him the conversation had been “registered” and inserted in his file.