Amazon has announced a pay increase of nearly 10% for tens of thousands of UK workers, rejecting attempts by the GMB union to gain negotiating rights over pay and working conditions.
The online retailer said the increase will see the minimum wage rise by 9.8%, to between £13.50 and £14.50 an hour depending on location. Staff with more than three years of service will receive a minimum wage of between £13.75 and £14.75 an hour.
The pay increase will apply to thousands of employees from September 29th, including those working in Amazon’s UK fulfilment centres.
Amazon’s UK workers have recently staged a series of strikes. The company is investing £550 million in pay increases for staff from 2022 onwards, adding that staff receive benefits such as subsidised meals and discounts.
A spokesman said: “That’s why we’re proud to announce that we’re increasing the minimum starting salary for all frontline employees to the equivalent of at least £28,000 per annum and continuing to offer industry-leading benefits from day one.”
GMB organiser Rachel Fagan said: “Forced to act by workers striking, Amazon’s management has done too little, too late. Amazon’s reputation has been tarnished by the way it treats its workers and now management is trying to cover up the facts. Unsafe working conditions, low pay and excessive oversight are ruining the lives of Amazon workers every day.”
In July, GMB narrowly lost a statutory vote at an Amazon warehouse outside Coventry that led to the union’s formal recognition. In a hotly contested vote, 50.5% of workers rejected recognition of the union.
Workers in Coventry have staged a series of strikes over the past 18 months demanding a £15 an hour minimum wage and the right to negotiate directly with management, and last November they were joined on the picket lines by trade unionists from Europe and the US who have been raising similar issues in their home countries.
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Amazon, which has a global policy of refusing to work with labor unions, preferring to deal directly with employees, is the retail-to-cloud services group founded by Jeff Bezos in his garage in 1994 and now worth nearly $2 trillion.
Some workers at the Coventry warehouse have accused Amazon of using union-busting tactics, such as displaying QR codes which, when scanned, would send an email to GMB’s membership department to cancel employees’ membership.
The Labour government has promised to make it easier for trade unions to gain recognition as part of a package of measures aimed at increasing the bargaining power of British workers.
Source: www.theguardian.com
