Management’s rejection of the right of workers to organise in the workplace enables the GMB to pose as an oppositional force, but it has offered to collaborate with the employer and smooth over industrial relations with a few figleaf improvements.Īmanda Gearing, a GMB regional organiser, stated months ago as the dispute began, “If Amazon wants to keep its empire running, it needs to get round the table with GMB to improve the pay and conditions of workers.” But for Amazon workers, official recognition of GMB would not provide the basis for a genuine industrial fight-back against the wealthy conglomerate. If the CAC grants the GMB the right to represent workers at Amazon’s BHX4 facility in Coventry, this would be the first official union recognition at an Amazon warehouse in the UK. It must grant this status to the GMB if it is the chosen representative of the majority of workers at the facility in disputes over pay, terms, and conditions.Īmazon contests the union’s figures and the GMB reports warehouse operatives are aware of management plans to quickly recruit hundreds of new staff to prevent a majority of members being reached, shutting the door on official union recognition. The CAC may grant a trade union the right to conduct collective bargaining with an employer on behalf of its members. To challenge this, the GMB contacted the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), the government’s business tribunal service, earlier this month. Amazon has refused, claiming that it would not be “an appropriate path” to voluntarily recognise the union. The GMB states that it has reached the required threshold of 51 percent of the 1,400 workers employed at the warehouse. The union is seeking official recognition by Amazon at the Coventry logistics facility. Many workers have been left cold, with those polled in consultative ballots at three other Amazon warehouses rejecting the GMB’s strike plans.
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Instead, the GMB is holding a series of limited actions designed to prompt Amazon to grant the union a seat at its table. It has no intention of waging the necessary campaign of militant class struggle required to win significantly improved conditions from a ruthlessly exploitative company with immense financial resources. This sentiment does not find authentic expression in the GMB or any other union bureaucracy, which intervened in the wake of the unofficial strikes to bring the growing mood of rebellion under control. The strike movement follows the announcement of the sacking of eight percent of Amazon’s global workforce this Spring as part of broader cutbacks in the technology sector.
Like other workers, warehouse operatives are taking action to maintain their living standards amid high rates of inflation and government budget cuts to social welfare benefits and services. The development of wildcat strikes at Amazon warehouses marked the entry of one of the most critical sections of the international working class into the UK’s strike wave. The company operates in dangerous working conditions, enforces brutal productivity targets, and implements continuous surveillance and monitoring of their employees.Īmazon employees have been forced to continue working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, their lives endangered by exposure to viral infection in overcrowded warehouses with insufficient health and safety measures in place. Workers toil in unacceptable conditions for low pay to generate super-profits for one of the world’s largest transnational corporations. Management at Amazon refuses to grant any concessions. Workers outside Amazon's fulfilment centre during the strike in Coventry, England, April 22, 2023
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