On a traffic island on the outskirts of Coventry, armed with handmade signs and a stack of orange bucket hats, a small but noisy team of organisers from the GMB union are taking on Amazon.
More than 3,000 staff here – “associates,” as Amazon calls them – were given the opportunity to vote in a historic ballot last week that could force the company to recognise a union for the first time in the UK. It is one of several tussles over union recognition globally at the retail-to-cloud-services group founded by Jeff Bezos in his garage in 1994 and now worth more than $2 trillion.
If the GMB wins, it would give workers the right to sit around the table with Amazon bosses and negotiate over pay, hours and holidays – anathema to the Seattle-based company, which is notoriously hostile to unions. The GMB believes recognition would also strengthen its hand in tackling the health and safety issues its representatives identify inside the vast Coventry warehouse, which is known as BHX4. Workers there have told of doing physically demanding work under close surveillance from managers, who can issue them with an “adapt” – in effect a disciplinary black mark – for any of a series of minor infractions.
With the new Labour government promising to strengthen the power of unions, the story of the GMB’s lengthy campaign at BHX4 underlines the barriers they currently face.
The ballot closed on Saturday, following a month-long process, and the result is expected on Monday. The workers have the backing of local Labour MP Taiwo Owateme, who says: “I’m so proud of all the workers at Amazon BHX4 for the campaign they’ve run and how far they’ve come in their fight.”
At the TUC congress in Brighton two years ago, Keir Starmer also hailed what he called the GMB’s “fantastic campaign”, urging Amazon to recognise the union.
Back on the approach road to BHX4, it is 6pm and the enthusiastic GMB team are greeting workers driving in for the night shift, to the insistent rhythm of dhol drummers, hired to create a carnival atmosphere.
Those who slow down are offered a free hat and exhorted to “vote yes!” Many beep their horns or make a thumbs-up sign out of their car window; others sweep silently past to check in for work.
“Let’s change BHX4 – let’s make history!” shouts the GMB’s Rachel Fagan through a portable PA system they have wheeled into the middle of the road. “Let’s make the change we want to see: let’s make this a better workplace!” yells her colleague Stuart Richards.
At the separate walk-in entrance nearby, another pair of GMB activists have set up a table with fizzy drinks, sweets and yet more bucket hats. As tired-looking staff stream out from the day shift, and others walk in ready to work through the night, they too are asked whether they have voted, and urged to choose “yes”.
Some workers avoid the activists’ gaze and stride purposefully past, but many stop for a chat and take a freebie hat or drink. Several who speak to the Observer say they have already voted for recognition, or plan to do so. “I voted GMB. We need some changes in there,” says Edwin Ogbu.
Mark Foley, a recent recruit, has also voted yes. “I just feel like there’s more power for the people.”
Anna, who does not give her surname, says: “I voted yes, because I think it will be good for us to have a change.”
Earlier, in a stuffy, windowless room in a nearby community centre, the same band of GMB activists, fuelled by coffee and cola, had hit the phones in an effort to persuade their 1,400 or so members at the site to vote yes.
Voting took place under the scrutiny of an independent team appointed by the government watchdog that oversees union recognition – the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC).
For two weeks before the ballot opened, small teams of GMB officers were allowed into the facility to address a series of 45-minute meetings and make the case for recognition, in a process meticulously negotiated with Amazon’s lawyers.
Amanda Gearing, the GMB’s senior organiser in the Midlands, says they were constantly accompanied while inside the building, including to the toilet, and that Amazon managers sat outside all of their meetings, knocking on the door when the 45-minute slot was up. “They made it as difficult as possible for us,” she says.
An Amazon spokesperson says all visitors were constantly accompanied for health and safety reasons.
Workers have previously described what some view as anti-union tactics, including QR codes posted up around the site which, when scanned by a staff member, automatically generate an email to the GMB cancelling their membership.
Mathias Bolton, head of commerce at the UNI Global Union, which campaigns for better terms and conditions at Amazon worldwide, says such anti-union tactics are familiar.
“The number one thing to realise when dealing with Amazon, which is actually not like most companies, is that all these [labour] decisions – whether it’s in Coventry, India, Germany or Bessemer, Alabama – are done in Seattle, at the highest levels,” he says. “It really is part of an overall ideology on ‘how are we going to deal with labour?’”
He says the company sees itself as a “disrupter” – including in relation to employment law.
Bolton adds: “It’s not just a traditional anti-unionism. It’s kind of like entering a labour market and saying: ‘Why are there these laws. Why are there these regulations? Why does this exist? We’re going to do something new.’”
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In the US, the result of the ballot at the Bessemer warehouse has been snarled up in legal action for two years, while in Staten Island, New York, where staff voted in favour of recognition in April 2022, Amazon has repeatedly challenged the result, and is yet to sit down to negotiate.
Indeed, such is its antipathy to unions that Amazon is taking legal action in the US, seeking to have the National Labor Relations Board watchdog declared unconstitutional. (Amazon has been joined in these efforts by Elon Musk’s car manufacturer, Tesla, and retailer Trader Joe’s.)
Back in the Midlands, Gearing’s involvement with Amazon locally goes back about 12 years, to before BHX4 had even opened – when she and her colleagues began hearing complaints about working conditions at another local site, in Rugeley. Ever since, the union has been steadily recruiting members.
In Coventry, the union’s organising drive was turbocharged in summer 2022 when workers who had hoped for a generous pay rise in recognition of their efforts throughout the pandemic were told they would receive an extra 50p an hour. Furious staff staged a wildcat stoppage and a small protest in Coventry city centre.
That ultimately led to the first industrial action at an Amazon facility in the UK, which began with a midnight walkout in January last year, and has continued with a series of strike days since.
The GMB’s current bid for formal recognition is a second attempt, after it withdrew an initial application last year.
At the time, the union accused Amazon of deliberately drafting in more than 1,000 additional staff in an effort to skew the decision. Amazon insists they were recruited in the normal course of business.
After another concerted membership drive, Coventry workers made a second application, resulting in the CAC granting them the right to hold the legally binding ballot. In order to win, a majority of those voting must choose “yes” – and these yes voters must constitute at least 40% of the bargaining unit.
Author James Bloodworth worked at the Rugeley warehouse when researching his 2018 book Hired, about the UK’s low-paid workers – reporting that, at that time, toilet breaks were monitored and that taking too many sick days could result in disciplinary action. “It’s striking how hostile Amazon is to unionisation,” he says. “What are they trying to hide there? Or what is it they don’t want to be picked up on?”
He suggests Amazon is resisting any challenge to its management culture – which includes what he calls a productivity obsession. “It’s really hard to keep up with these productivity targets – which is the biggest complaint I heard while I was working there, and have heard since.”
Like every union, the GMB is waiting to see how much practical difference Labour’s “new deal for working people” will make.
The party has promised to make recognition easier, and the document Labour published on the new deal during the election campaign claimed: “Stronger trade unions and collective bargaining will be key to tackling problems of insecurity, inequality, discrimination, poor enforcement and low pay.”
Kate Bell, assistant general secretary of the TUC, said: “Even if the current hurdles for union recognition are not cleared this time, we will keep fighting until every Amazon worker in the UK has decent pay and conditions.” She added that with the new deal about to be introduced, “the tide is turning against bad employers”.
It is not clear how tough the new government is willing to get with corporate giants such as Amazon. But for now, despite the odds against them, the small band of GMB activists in Coventry are hopeful they can make history. “I’m quite positive about it,” says Gearing. “Our prediction is that we will win.”
A spokesperson for Amazon said: “Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have. We regularly review our pay to ensure we offer competitive wages and benefits.
“We also place enormous value on engaging directly with our employees across Amazon. It’s an essential part of our work culture. We value that direct relationship and so do our employees.”