Ryan FowlerThe GMB Union has initiated legal proceedings against Amazon, alleging the company has been coercing employees into cancelling their union memberships.
Known as an Inducement Claim, this action allows Amazon workers to challenge their employer for encouraging them to abandon their rights to union representation and collective bargaining.
This development follows shortly after GMB achieved a formal recognition ballot at one of Amazon’s fulfilment centres.
If successful, Amazon would be required to negotiate with the union on matters such as wages, working hours, and holidays, marking the first such recognition outside of the USA.
The union’s claims against Amazon include pressures to leave the union through QR codes that prompt an email request to cancel union membership, mandatory anti-union seminars led by senior managers, display of anti-union messages across Amazon workplaces, and allegations of bullying and intimidation of union representatives.
Amanda Gearing, a senior organiser with GMB, described Amazon’s tactics as those of a “company out of control,” using its resources to prevent workers from unionising.
She said: “Amazon is a multi-billion-pound corporation, doing everything in its power to stop minimum wage workers from forming a union.
“Their latest American-style anti-union campaign proves they will stop at nothing to beat the rules that every other employer in the UK is expected to follow.
“It’s desperate measures and goes someway to show why Amazon workers as so determined to win the union recognition they deserve”.
Rosa Curling from Foxglove Legal, added: “In Britain, everyone has the right to join a union and organise for better working conditions. In Coventry, Amazon have driven a bright orange truck through that basic British right – and the law.
“Workers are cornered in the warehouse and told to leave the union, hustled into anti-union propaganda seminars, then have a QR code shoved in their face that terminates their membership with just one click to quit. If only it was so easy to quit Amazon Prime!
“All this while Amazon is raining cash on Coventry to flood the warehouse with new hires and shut down GMB’s union recognition push.
“That’s why Foxglove is supporting this case: to make Amazon obey the law, stop workers being cheated – and get them the protection at work they so desperately need.”
