Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
On 4 August it will have been a year since Amazon workers began fighting back. Last year, workers rose up in anger at an abysmal 50p-an-hour pay rise from one of the wealthiest companies on the planet. They rallied nationwide in workplace canteens, took to sit-down protests, and even walked out.
Soon, a small group at Coventry’s BHX4 site began organising in the GMB union. Before 4 August there were only around 30 union members at BHX4; within a month they numbered over 300. After just missing the Tory anti-union turnout in an industrial action ballot, they balloted again, won, and struck in January.
Since then, they have taken 22 days of strike action, and grown to 1,000 members! The picket lines are impressive, lined with hundreds of strikers, blocking traffic for miles despite the efforts of police and private security. Many workers have gone from not knowing what a union is to working the pickets, turning trucks around, and persuading colleagues to join.
Amazon feared this would happen, and fought back from the start. Security started searching workers’ clothes, bags and gloves to find and confiscate union material. They hired over 1,000 extra workers just to ensure GMB didn’t have the legally required proportion of the workforce to win automatic recognition.
The union has encouraged workers at other Amazon sites to join the fight. Now, Coventry isn’t alone. The Rugeley, Staffordshire, site BHX1 has successfully balloted to strike. German workers and American Teamsters have also struck against Amazon.
In one year, a fledgling but powerful group of unionised workers has been built in Amazon. The company couldn’t ignore it, or stop it growing. But the fight is far from over, and the workers know it. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos won’t grow a conscience. The only way to get Amazon to give a decent wage and working conditions is to fight them and beat them.
The strike must reach more sites so it can paralyse Amazon. More picket meetings and a fighting, democratic union structure will galvanise the members. They will need a new layer of combative stewards and lay organisers. The National Shop Stewards Network could aid by bringing together experienced rank-and-file reps from across the trade union movement.
The GMB could add a political dimension to strengthen the struggle. Instead of blank cheques to Labour, GMB should demand a £15-an-hour minimum wage from an incoming Labour government, and scrapping all anti-union laws. If they supported worker candidates at the next election who support their members, that would be a good start.
With a growing fightback armed with those ideas, by this time next year the workers could bring Amazon to heel!
