UK Amazon Workers Plan January Strike Over Pay
Another round of UK-based Amazon employees seem to be making the company’s “just walk out” strategy their own.
Workers have committed to a strike on Jan. 25 against the jack-of-all-goods giant, according to their union.
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Per a release from the UK’s General, Municipal, Boilermakers’ and Allied Trade Union, better known as the GMB Union, employees will strike for increased pay and union recognition at a fulfillment center just outside of Birmingham, England, in the town of Sutton Coldfield.
But the strike could represent a relatively small portion of the workforce at the fulfillment center, which opened in October 2023.
“Just 19 GMB members out of our 2,000 Sutton Coldfield fulfillment center colleagues have voted in favor of industrial action,” an Amazon spokesperson said, noting that the strike will cause “zero disruption” to its customers.
Rachel Fagan, a GMB organizer, said UK-based Amazon workers are unhappy about their current pay.
That has been a consistent complaint from GMB members; the union first started striking against Amazon in January 2023. The Jan. 25 Sutton Coldfield strike will occur on the one-year anniversary of the first Amazon warehouse strike in the UK.
“For workers to down tools at Amazon’s new Birmingham HQ, just weeks after it opened its doors, goes to show how furious Amazon workers in the UK are,” Fagan said in a statement from the union. “One year on from the first strike day, the message from GMB members at Amazon is the same; recognize our union and end poverty pay.”
The Amazon spokesperson said the minimum starting pay will reach between 12.30 pounds ($15.65) and 13 pounds ($16.54) by April of 2024. The actual amount depends on location.
That spokesperson said those starting wages represent “a 20 percent increase over two years and 50 percent [increase] since 2018.”
But in the past, GMB organizers have criticized the e-commerce giant for those figures, instead demanding starting hourly wages increase to 15 pounds ($19.09).
Amazon doesn’t recognize GMB as an official union. Despite that, workers throughout the UK have gone on strike at a number of the company’s facilities—hundreds of employees have gone on strike over the past year.
Some of those strikes intentionally targeted major retail holidays, like Black Friday, when international warehouse workers sought to “Make Amazon Pay.” Others have tried to hit Amazon where it hurts, like those who abandoned their regular work on the company’s self-proclaimed holiday, Prime Day.
Despite workers’ whingeing, the Amazon spokesperson said the company works to “provide great benefits, a positive work environment and excellent career opportunities” to its UK workforce of 75,000.
Sourcing Journal reached out to GMB Union for comment.
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