The Justifiable Labor Unrest At Amazon... Has Spread To Coventry Facility, Just Outside London: GMB Union Wage Actions, Coming...

This is my mid-monthly report on labor-related "tings" (ref. Rihanna's second bump, last night!), at bad old Amazon. For its part, Amazon thinks it is doing well, by paying a max of about £11.45 -- or just one about pound, over minimum wage in England. The newest workers at the facility make just 11 pence over UK minimum wage (at today's exchange rates, that's only about $12.62 an hour). Damn -- and no one can really live on that, there -- on even a fifty hour work week.

And so this fight is with already unionized warehouse workers -- in a large distribution facility that serves most of the London exurbs. The workers are seeking a true living wage, and fairer benefits. A series of day long walk outs will be staged, between now and St. Patrick's Day -- each timed to disrupt speedy deliveries on these alloted days. Here's the latest, from Reuters (UK bureau):

. . .Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Britain will walk out for seven further days in an escalation of a dispute over pay, their trade union said on Monday.

Last month GMB union members at the warehouse in Coventry, central England, staged the first ever strike at the U.S. e-commerce giant's operations in Britain.

GMB said more than 350 staff at Coventry warehouse would now take further industrial action on February 28, March 2 and March 13-17. . . .

That placard is pitch-perfect: human line workers are indeed. . . not robots. Mr. Bezos would do well to take that to heart here, and across the pond. Smile. . . Coventry (UK) has new, deeper meaning for us here, in my house now, as well. . . through my eldest daughter. . . .

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