Amazon faces fresh industrial action in the UK, after members of the GMB union at a new fulfilment centre in Birmingham voted to strike over pay and conditions later this month.
The GMB says “up to 100” workers will take part in the strike at the warehouse, which opened in October – a small fraction of the total workforce – but it hopes to use the action to boost the profile of the dispute and recruit more supporters.
GMB members at the site have chosen 25 January as their first strike day, exactly one year after a stoppage by workers at Amazon’s Coventry warehouse, in what was the first action of its kind against the company in the UK.
Rachel Fagan, a local GMB organiser, said: “The industrial chaos Amazon faces isn’t going to disappear; it’s growing every day.
The GMB had hoped to win formal recognition in Coventry, but withdrew its application after the regulator, the central arbitration committee, backed Amazon’s claim that the workforce had swelled to 2,700.
An Amazon spokesperson said: “Just 19 GMB members out of our 2,000 Sutton Coldfield fulfilment centre colleagues have voted in favour of industrial action.
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We divorced from England once, in a big strike called the Declaration of Independence. In fact a big union came of that, something United something or other.