Amazon workers’ Coventry strike

Close on 500 GMB members at Amazon’s West Midland ‘fulfilment centre’ (ie: warehouse) are striking from 13 to 17 March.

In January and again in February, around 350 workers at the warehouse in Coventry were the first UK-based Amazon employees to take industrial action.

The GMB union is calling for a pay rise from £10.50 to £15 an hour, despite the union not being recognised by the company

Amazon has offered a 5% pay rise to the workers, or an estimated 50p an hour that the union had previously dismissed as “derisory”.

Shiraz spoke to GMB officer and picket marshal Tom Rigby, who told us that they had caused a traffic jam of over three miles outside the warehouse entrance (there is only one road in and one out) and turned away around 15 lorries.

Individuals approaching the entrance are being asked to phone their line managers to ask about crossing the picket line, thus causing further delay and maximizing the impact of the action. After talking to pickets, some individuals have been persuaded to join the union and register as being on strike. Tom added that even some of the police seem quite sympathetic, especially when it is pointed out to them that as Amazon pay no tax in the UK, the company does not contribute to police pay!

We also spoke to striker Darren Westwood who told us that union membership in the Coventry warehouse has increased from about 30 (ie one in fifty) in July of last when the campaign first started, up to about 300 (one in five) when the first strikes began in January and now stands at nearly 500. The target is to recruit half the 1,300 workforce. Darren and Tom said the aim is to build the membership to at least 50% of the workforce by pursuing the dispute before going to the CAC for union recognition – a tactic that the GMB has used successfully with other anti-union employers recently.

“Morale is high and we know we’re hurting them” says Darren.

• donate to the strike fund here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/gmb-are-standing-with-amazon-workers

Phil Street, secretary of Coventry Trades Council writes (in today’s Morning Star):

IT WAS appropriate that stormy weather accompanied the first day of the first week-long strike that Amazon has ever experienced in this country and possibly in the whole of Europe.

Workers at the company’s Coventry warehouse are creating a fair few dark clouds for the multibillion-dollar company.

The five days of action follow on from two separate days of strikes called by GMB in January and February.

There can be little doubt about the dispute’s “direction of travel.”

It was only last August that management excitedly called the workers together to tell them about their pay rise.

“It was August 4 when manages acting all enthusiastically called us to a meeting to announce the pay rise,” said a striker to me.

“The bosses seemed very eager to give us the good news, they said we were all going to get an extra 50p an hour.” She said the news went down like a lead balloon.

The derisory pay offer was the starting pistol for the workers deciding they were not going to passively acquiesce to this insult.

A few of the employees, already holding union membership, contacted the GMB.

GMB, like pretty much everyone else, was aware that Amazon had a poor reputation for the way it treated its workforce. The union has been engaged with workers on the Coventry site since it opened four years ago.

It began a process of support and recruitment, but Amazon did not make life easy for the union.

This is an anti-union company that not only does not recognise a trade union, it makes it awkward for employees to speak to a union.

The company makes sure the union officer does not get far past the threshold.

Meetings between a union officer and an Amazon employee take place in a small room just off the reception area.

However, in spite of Amazon’s endeavours to freeze out trade unions, GMB officers like Amanda Gearing, Stuart Richards, Rachel Fagan and Tom Rigby have made remarkable headway.

By the time the first strike was called by GMB strike leaders group, made up entirely of grass roots members, on January 25, the union had recruited some 130 members. Today that figure stands at nearly 500, out of a workforce of around 1,300.

Rigby was particularly pleased with the union’s success in recruiting the “jam busters” or “problem solvers,” essentially the people who deal with the logistical issues to do with labelling weights packaging and directions.

He said: “They are going to have to cope in there for the next week with having no-one to call on if one of the machines packs up or misbehaves.”

However, his main role has been training newly recruited members, helping them with, among other things, how to behave on a picket line and the best ways to attempt to persuade people not to cross picket lines.

From watching the pickets on the first day of the strike they seem to have gained enormously from this training.

I watched a striker chatting calmly and coherently with a driver who was clearly convinced by the case presented to him as he turned his car around, parked and joined a longish queue of strikers who were registering as being on strike or joining the union or both.

Afterwards I spoke to the picket, who like so many of Amazon’s workers, is from overseas — in this guy’s case, he was from Guinea. He and several others told me about how low pay was having a terrible effect on their lives.

Let’s not be in any doubt. At the heart of this strike is pay. The workers at Amazon’s Coventry designated “Fulfilment Centre” earn £10.50 per hour.

I was told by one person on the picket line that without overtime and working 60 hours each week, they would find it impossible to cope on take-home pay of £340 per week.

But overtime is not guaranteed. One person on the picket line said: “Although I can just about pay my mortgage, my energy bill has risen from £120 per month to £280.” Another told me how a co-worker was having to pawn some sentimental belongings to be able to pay the bills and feed her children.

Other issues stand out. The company’s insensitivity towards its workers’ financial plight is only one aspect of its hard-heartedness.

I heard from a worker who had recovered from cancer about the company demand that those taking sick leave must produce a letter from a health professional confirming their medical condition.

He said he produced a letter written by a senior cancer specialist at University Hospital Coventry that he had to undergo surgery.

This did not stop Amazon docking him two weeks’ pay in his absence as it said it would only accept a letter from a GP!

Another major source of Amazon’s management approach that saps morale is its algorithm-based target system.

Few understand it and many feel that it no way reflects the amount or quality of work they are completing.

One Amazon worker said to me that “one of the ‘leads’ will tell you that you are only achieving 70 per cent, but 70 per cent of what?”

Another worker said that Amazon is a “show-off” company. “If you want to get on you have to impress the person above you in the management pecking order, one effect of that is that the ambitious ‘leads’ can be brutal in their attitude towards workers in their effort to scale the greasy pole.”

Staff talking to one another and “idle time,” which may be linked to faulty equipment, also results in reprimands.

According to everyone I spoke to, management are behaving as though the strike is not happening.

No effort is being made to address workers’ grievances nor their pay demand.

GMB is asking for £15 per hour. Management will be using the tactic of ignoring it as the protest will soon go away.

This may well prove erroneous. From what I can see, the Amazon workers in Coventry are both determined and gaining in confidence from solidarity with one another and from the support they are receiving from the wider trade union movement and local people.

They have had contact with other Amazon employees, both in this country and in the US. The Amazon workers in Coventry hope they will be successful in their battle for a decent wage and also hope their bravery will inspire others employed by a company whose UK sales in 2022 reached £20 billion and whose profits in the UK alone passed £200 million will stand up to Amazon management and demand pay justice.

Given the economic elements, you would have thought paying those who worked throughout the pandemic an extra £4.50 an hour would not hurt.