Amazon seeks to scupper union bid

Amazon warehouse workers at the BHX4 site in Coventry struck again on 19-20 March, and on 27-28 March in a new site in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham.

The GMB union is also pursuing a claim for formal recognition at BHX4. It believes it now has over 50% of the workforce in membership, although accuses Amazon of artificially inflating the size of the workforce by hiring additional staff. The total workforce now stands at 3,500, compared to 1,400 in December 2022.

According to a recent Novara Media article, the workforce has been inflated beyond the available workload, with Amazon now continually offering workers “Voluntary Time Off” to reduce the number of spare staff in the workplace. According to workers who spoke to Novara’s Polly Smythe: “Queues in the staff canteen can be up to half an hour long, giving workers little time to eat their food before returning to their shift. The ability to pick up overtime shifts has disappeared with the over-staffing crisis, leaving the many workers who’d come to depend on extra shifts to boost their wages struggling to make ends meet.”

A leaflet distributed by the company in the workplace asks workers to scan a QR code if they have recently cancelled their union membership, clearly indicating Amazon is attempting to monitor GMB membership levels.

Winning recognition at BHX4 will be a historic step forward for workers’ power at Amazon. The success will need to be built on by using any collective-bargaining structure to assertively pursue workers’ demands, whilst also seeking to spread strikes to as many other sites as possible.