By Sacha Fox
11 July, 6:30am, Coventry, Amazon BHX4 warehouse.
570-plus workers out on lively pickets in the morning (likely followed by 100-200 this evening) – chanting, blocking the road, and convincing their workmates to join up. Industrial action officially started in January with a walkout of 350 followed by a round of strikes in the spring, and the GMB branch has now voted for six months of further action. This latest strike covered 11-13 July, during Amazon’s “Prime Week”.
Old-school industrial action
Back in the spring, strikes were even livelier, with one stopping a van and bringing gridlock to the A45 all the way back towards the city centre. Since then, police have been present to attempt to prevent traffic blockages.
Action began before that, with wildcat strikes in August 2022, whch also took place in five or six other sites around the country. Back then, GMB had about 20 members at BHX4, and there were a few in Unite. The action was a grassroots one. That “canteen strike” was over having only had a 30p pay rise in summer 2021, and the 2022 pay rise being delayed until the October pay review, when that eventually materialised, it was an insulting 50p.
Instead of a pay rise, Amazon tried to bribe workers with a Christmas “don’t strike” bonus of £350 (as it turned out, the threshold for action was not met at Christmas, but was met in January, so workers got the best of both worlds there), and various trinkets such as candles, popcorn, and the opportunity to play fairground games to win “swaggies”, vouchers that can be exchanged for Amazon-branded merch. One worker wrote on the noticeboard: “thanks for the chocolates, hope my landlord accepts them!”
Amazon has tried to exploit ethnical and cultural divisions, recruiting workers from Eritrea and Eastern Europe, and unofficially segregating them within the warehouse, but each attempt to divide workers has just given the union more members, gained by the rank-and-file having conversations on the shop floor and in the canteen. Now they are trying again with temporary workers from India, but headway is being made getting them to join. Their contracts are precarious – up in October – and so is their visa status.
Demands and dispute
The key factor in the dispute is pay. Warehouse workers in Coventry are often getting paid £10.50/hr, and have to take extra shifts or additional jobs to make ends meet – their demand is a living wage of £15.
Amazon often claims in the press that they have given a 38% pay rise since 2018. That is a somewhat massaged statistic. Some of it was in lieu of share options, which they took away, and the rest has been mostly pay rises to keep ahead of increases in the legal minimum wage. If you calculate properly and take inflation into account, workers have actually taken a real-terms pay cut of 18%.
Another underreported factor is safety. Health and safety at Amazon is done in-house, and factory conditions aren’t safe. One Problem Solver told me he often has to work two lines, which means seven “u-boats” on each, each one with many totes, and those totes stacked 10-15 packages high, over six feet. Temperature in vans during summer often hits unsafe levels.
Nick, a worker who suffered from bowel cancer, had a letter from his hospital surgeon and sent it to Amazon HR in London, but the company wouldn’t accept it, saying they only take fit notes from GPs, not world-class robotics surgeons. He missed three weeks sickpay during the pandemic until he got the letter accepted, then got a letter of concern on return.
Union recognition would mean independent health and safety reps and better working conditions.
Spaceships for the bosses
Between April 2020 and March 2021, Jeff Bezos made $75bn. He could’ve given every Amazon worker $50,000 during Covid, and still have an obscene amount left over, but instead, he bought himself a spaceship, a superyacht, a New York penthouse, the most expensive mansion in Hollywood, and the rights to Lord of the Rings. And he went through a divorce that took him from the richest man in the world to the third richest. Workers got pennies, a few candles, and a “thank you”.
Strikes could spread, with branches in Mansfield (Notts.), Coalville and Kegworth (Leicestershire), and Rugby (Warwickshire) taking indicative ballots. In Rugeley (Staffordshire) where the warehouse is threatened with closure, the result of the workers’ ballot on whether to take industrial action is due this week.
Workers should take lessons from the rank-and-file militant organising here, attend any Amazon pickets in their area, and donate to the strike fund at https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/gmb-are-standing-with-amazon-workers.
- This post also appears in the current issue of Solidarity.
Shiraz Socialist (Second Run) 