UK Immigrant Workers May Win Europe’s First Amazon Union

Three thousand Amazon workers at a warehouse in the United Kingdom are poised to become the first recognized Amazon union in Europe.

Workers at fulfillment center BHX4 in Coventry, central England, cast votes July 8–13 for the GMB union to negotiate over pay, hours, and working conditions with the Amazon bosses. The results are expected July 17.

The watershed vote comes after a long, bruising battle; Amazon tried US-style stalling and union-busting tactics. Meanwhile the workers have taken thirty-seven days of strike action in two years. They’ve grown their union to fourteen hundred members, established a stewards network, and built multiethnic solidarity. In the UK, workers can become dues-paying members before union recognition is attained.

Last year, the GMB withdrew a previous application to the Central Arbitration Committee, the government agency that regulates collective bargaining, over Amazon’s “dirty tricks.” The company had brought in thirteen hundred new workers to dilute the pro-union workforce of seventeen hundred. The GMB estimates this cost Amazon $389,530 (£300,000) per week.

At the state level, the winds may now be blowing in the GMB’s favor after Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won control of the government on a platform of a “new deal for working people,” including making it easier for unions to organize.

But the stakes reach beyond Britain. The UK is Amazon’s largest market in Europe after Germany, where the service-sector union Ver. di has been striking and fighting for a decade to win collective bargaining rights.

A union victory here in Coventry, a city about a hundred miles northwest of London, would reverberate across Amazon’s vast global logistics network and boost international coordination among…