First modification:
Never before have workers from the US tech giant gone on strike in the UK. Nearly 300 employees declared themselves unemployed this Wednesday, January 25, at the Coventry warehouse, in central England, demanding a 50% pay increase, well above the 5% that Amazon already granted them. Inflation and the wages of US workers are the main reasons that argue for demanding the increase.
They decided to set a precedent to be heard. Workers at one of Amazon’s 30 UK warehouses decided to go on strike with a central argument: their wage increase last year is well below the current cost of living.
The United Kingdom reached a historic inflation rate of 11.1% per year in October 2022, a rate that had not been recorded since 1981 and that has cost the British authorities to reverse. The most recent data, that of December, is still high with 10.5% per year and complicates the quality of life of many workers.
“Hopefully this strike can get Amazon headquarters to talk to us about offering us something, to give us something a little interesting, so we can survive and not just get paid to come to work,” said Nicholas Henderson, one of the Amazon workers.
Strikes in the United Kingdom have spread in different sectors, being those of ambulance workers the ones that have made the most headlines in the international press and revealing the critical situation that has been dragging the country since the political scandal of Boris Johnson and the Liz Truss financial crisis.
Another of the arguments of technology employees in England is that their salary is much lower compared to workers in the United States. The hourly rate in Coventry was raised to $12.92 last year, but his call is for it to rise to $18.49, which would be very close to the $19 an hour Americans receive.
For the strike organizers, Amazon pays very little tax on the multimillion-dollar profits it registers each year and from their calculations, the company can adjust the numbers to benefit its workforce.
“We have to work incredibly long shifts just to try to make ends meet. We have to be better than that. This is a multi-billion dollar company that makes huge amounts of money, they may not pay any taxes, but they certainly make a lot of money and all the burden falls on the workers. We are saying that a portion of that profit should go towards supporting these workers, so they can live decent lives,” explained Stuart Richards, lead organizer for the GMB Union.
Amazon bosses say their starting salary in the US is “more than $19 per hour”
They say they’ve been lobbying for the US government to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour since 2018
And they expect workers at #Amazon Coventry to be happy with £10.50?#AmazonStrike pic.twitter.com/8EtSdTcsmH
— Stuart Richards (@GMBStuart) January 25, 2023
Amazon has said that the salary of its workers in the United Kingdom is “competitive” and that for this reason they have not considered an increase greater than the 5% that has already been made.
With Reuters, AP and local media
