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Members of the GMB union on the picket line stand in front of a freight lorry outside the Amazon fulfilment centre in Coventry, November 7, 2023
AMAZON has been dealt an “historic blow” as a government body ruled that GMB’s union recognition application at its Coventry warehouse must go to a legally binding workers’ vote.
The Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) ruling brings GMB one step closer to Europe’s first recognised union at Amazon and comes after more than a year of industrial action and 30 strike days.
The CAC will now appoint an independent organisation to arrange a legally binding vote of workers, with a ballot timetable likely to be announced in the coming weeks.
GMB senior organiser Amanda Gearing said: “From day one of GMB’s fight for union rights at Amazon it has been a modern-day David and Goliath battle.
“One year on this is a truly historic moment as workers stand up against the company’s relentless anti-union propaganda.”
She said Amazon workers have refused poverty pay and unsafe working conditions, demanding “dignity at work and a union to represent them.”
An Amazon spokesman said: “Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have.”
JOHN LANG recalls how Murdoch used scabbing electricians and even devised a fake newspaper to force a confrontation with printers – then sacked them all
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR
