British Union Fails to Secure Amazon Warehouse Representation

A British union narrowly missed securing representation rights at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry, with 49.5% of workers voting in favor. The GMB union accused Amazon of union-busting tactics, including recruiting more staff and pressuring workers to cancel union membership. Amazon denies the allegations, emphasizing direct engagement with employees.

A British union has narrowly failed to secure the right to formally represent workers at an Amazon warehouse, with staff rejecting the chance to become the first site outside the U.S. to force the e-commerce giant to negotiate labor terms. In a blow to the UK trade union movement, the GMB union said 49.5% of the 2,600 workers who voted backed union recognition at the distribution site in Coventry, central England, falling just short of the majority required in a ballot overseen by the independent Central Arbitration Committee.

The union said it lost the ballot by just 28 votes. Under current rules, it cannot apply for statutory recognition at the site for three years. The union accused Amazon of deliberately frustrating its recognition bid by recruiting hundreds of additional workers at the site so it no longer had the numbers to make the ballot threshold—a charge Amazon denies.

The union alleged Amazon pressured workers into canceling their union memberships during the ballot period, displaying posters with a QR code that generated an email to the union asking for memberships to be canceled. Amazon faces a legal challenge over what the union called 'union-busting tactics.' 'This is just the beginning. Amazon now faces a legal challenge, while the fire lit by workers in Coventry and across the UK is still burning,' said Stuart Richards, GMB senior organizer.

Amazon thanked everyone who voted in the ballot. 'Across Amazon, we place enormous value on engaging directly with our employees and having daily conversations with them. It's an essential part of our work culture,' a spokesperson for the company said.

Staff at the Coventry site have been involved in a dispute over pay and union recognition for more than a year, carrying out numerous strikes at Amazon, which employs about 75,000 staff in the UK, making it one of the country's top ten private sector employers. Amazon's treatment of workers has been in the spotlight for years, historically opposing unionization and preferring to resolve issues directly with employees. Staff in Staten Island, New York, forced the company to recognize a trade union in the U.S. for the first time in 2022, although subsequent votes at other warehouses did not follow suit.

Amazon interacts with unions in countries like Italy and Germany—where required by law—as well as France, Spain, and Canada. Separately, Britain's King Charles set out the new Labour government's legislative agenda, promising to give workers more rights and unions more power. Labour believes Britain's current employment laws are outdated and a major factor in the UK's worst period of industrial relations since the 1980s, planning to simplify the process of statutory union recognition and ensure workers and union members have a reasonable right to access a union within workplaces.

(With inputs from agencies.)