Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
Taking on one of capitalism’s biggest employers demands a great deal of courage and organisation. The Amazon strikes in Coventry are impressive events that show both. Well-organised picket lines have dozens of picketers at every shift change. They have blocked lorries and cars to try to convince their co-workers to turn around.
And it’s working. Miles of traffic build up as workers stop in their cars and lorries to hear the arguments of the unionised workers. Most of the striking workers weren’t even in a union until a few months ago, when spontaneous protests erupted against the 50p-an-hour pay rises.
By the January strike day, GMB membership at the site had grown from 30 to 300, out of a workforce of just over 1000; by the February action it was around 350; after several trucks and cars refused to cross the picket line, it has been reported another 70 joined the union.
On the warehouse floor conversation is extremely limited and is watched by cameras and managers. On the picket line, workers are able to discuss the horrendous conditions and the impact of low pay.
Every worker now knows about the colleague who was threatened with the sack for being off ill with cancer for too long, and about another called into the manager’s office for looking at his phone for five seconds. Everyone knows someone who struggles to pay the bills, or is stuck in debt, or uses a food bank. They know their best chance of changing that right now is by winning against Amazon, which they know can afford to give them £15 an hour and better conditions.
Amazon has responded by sending police up to the picket, by labelling some striking workers as ‘no shows’, and organising ‘all-hands meetings’ at sites across the country, presumably to plan workarounds for the strikes.
It is important to continue the union recruitment drive across the Coventry site, combined with mass meetings of the striking workers, to discuss what next after the week-long strike, including possible further escalation.
The action could inspire walkouts at other sites, as we saw last summer. Socialist Party members have raised the need for coordinated strike action. The week of action 13-17 March includes Budget Day, when Amazon workers will join 600,000 other workers on strike.
That day could be used as a rallying call for Amazon workers across the country to protest. Further days of national protest, and depot meetings addressed by Coventry strikers, would aid union recruitment and the potential to spread the strike.
Defeating Amazon would be a gigantic step forward for workers at Coventry and for the other 75,000 Amazon workers in Britain.
