But the union’s success in overcoming this bureaucracy in Coventry has caught the attention of Amazon workers around the world, who are trying to organize a global movement to challenge the company. As Amazon’s third largest market (after the US and Germany), unions see the UK as an important link in the company’s mission to internationalize the worker movement. “I know they are watching,” Westwood said, adding that he had received messages of support from France and Germany.
Workers in those countries know they are more likely to force Amazon to the negotiating table if unions in more than one country can strike at the same time. André Scheer, secretary of German union Verdi, said: “Amazon is an international company and it responds to strikes in one country by relying on fulfillment centers in another. When Amazon workers go on strike in Germany, customer packages will be shipped to the country from Poland or the Czech Republic instead.
The Coventry strike comes the same week as Amazon workers from Germany, Poland, Canada, the US, France and Spain summon in Geneva to plan further protests. According to UNI Global, an international coalition involved in the #MakeAmazonPay campaign, unions are now looking to build on the success of the Black Friday concerted protests against Amazon in November, which have spread spanning more than 30 countries from Costa Rica to Luxembourg.
The Coventry strike is not the first time UK Amazon workers have complained publicly about wages and working conditions. In August, employees at warehouses across the country held unofficial protest in the warehouse canteen. But compared with other countries, the UK’s organizing efforts got off to a slow start. Amazon workers in central Germany succeeded for a decade, while a warehouse on Staten Island became the first of its kind in the United States unify in April 2022.
Employees in the Coventry warehouse currently earn around £10.5 ($13) an hour. But the union that represents them, GMB, is calling for that figure to rise to £15 an hour, which would make British workers’ wages equivalent to the $18 per hour their US counterparts receive. Okay. Amazon’s local area manager, Neil Travis, describes the company’s salary as competitive—equivalent to or above similar jobs locally. Still, many of the employees here have worked during the pandemic — a period in which Amazon saw quarterly profits triple — and claim that they earned that raise.
Even on the other side of the pandemic, long days are still ravaging Westwood. He says his shoulder hurts at night, after more than three years moving pallets inside the Coventry warehouse. But the 57-year-old is also concerned about the management culture inside Amazon. “The way the management treats people is shocking.” He said that he was recently reprimanded for leaning against a wall and getting his breath back. As he protested – “This is not the army!” – he said he was told by his manager that the conversation was “recorded”; immortal in his profile.
For others, that management style epitomizes the monitoring software workers Amazon uses to monitor their performance. Garfield Hylton, also a GMB union member, describes his day at Amazon as being haunted by a number; what he calls his “ratio”. Every morning, and again in the afternoon, a manager comes to him to tell him how well he has been working according to the company’s algorithm.
