By James Davey
LONDON (Reuters) – The GMB union has failed to secure the right to formally represent workers at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry, central England, Amazon said on Wednesday.
The ballot result on union recognition is a blow for the UK trade union movement as victory in the ballot would have forced the U.S. ecommerce giant to negotiate labour terms with a UK union for the first time.
The Coventry workers have been involved in a dispute over pay and union recognition for over a year, and have carried out numerous strikes.
The GMB union has argued Amazon frustrated its recognition bid by recruiting hundreds of additional workers at the site so the union no longer had the numbers to make the ballot threshold.
Amazon’s treatment of workers has been in the spotlight for years. It has historically opposed unionisation, saying its preference has been to resolve issues with employees directly rather than through unions.
However, in 2022, workers at its warehouse in Staten Island, New York, forced the company to recognise a trade union in the U.S. for the first time.
That was seen as key moment for the union movement. However, Amazon workers at two other New York warehouses and one in Alabama have since voted against unionising.
Amazon does interact with unions in countries such as Germany and Italy. But that is largely because it is required to by government.
Amazon employs about 75,000 in the UK, making it one of the country’s top ten private sector employers.
Britain’s new Labour government has promised to give workers more rights and unions more power.
It plans to update trade union legislation, removing restrictions on trade union activity and ensuring industrial relations are based around good faith negotiation and bargaining.
Labour says British employment laws are outdated, a drag on economic growth and a major factor in the UK’s worst period of industrial relations since the 1980s.
(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Kate Holton and William James)
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