In Coventry, The Union Vote Came Up Just A Mere Handful Of Votes... Short. Against Amazon Tactics -- And 10 Hour Shifts...

I admit, I couldn't bring myself to write about this at mid-week, with all the other awful news. . . spilling out onto the docks, on this side of the ocean. Ugh. But we are done with the QVC hosting from Milwaukee. . . finally [he kept people awake, or asleep more likely, on the East Coast well after midnight Thursday, into Friday morning, with a hateful, vain and utterly disjointed rant. . . of over 90 minutes, and 16,000 words. Wow]. So I will note it, now -- as the fog lifts.

[Prior backgrounder of mine, here.] And now, without any additional ado, here is the NYT, on it all -- from mid-week:

. . .A fight to form the first union at an Amazon warehouse in Britain came to an end this week, as organizers of the effort fell short by just 28 votes.

About 2,600 employees at the warehouse in Coventry, in the Midlands of England, took part in a ballot for union recognition, which would have forced Amazon to negotiate collectively with the bulk of workers there over working conditions, as well as pay, holiday and other benefits. More than 3,000 Amazon workers were eligible to vote.

But in the end, the effort failed, with only 49.5 percent voting in favor in a poll approved by the Central Arbitration Committee, a government body. It is the closest any Amazon center in Britain has come to being unionized.

The results come amid accusations by GMB, a nationwide union, lawyers and some workers that the American tech giant had been heavy-handed in its efforts to discourage unionization. Amazon has a history of pushing back against union movements. In the United States, only one warehouse, on Staten Island, has a formally recognized union. A labor union in Germany has been trying to get collective bargaining powers for more than a decade.

The vote fell “agonizingly short” of a majority, said GMB, which counts Amazon employees among its 500,000 members from various occupations. “Amazon bosses have created a culture of fear for low-paid workers trying to improve their pay, terms and conditions,” said Stuart Richards, an organizer at GMB.

GMB cannot make another bid for formal recognition for three years, but workers are continuing a legal claim that accuses Amazon of illegally trying to induce employees to quit the union. Workers claimed the company pressured them to attend several seminars that suggested the union would jeopardize employees’ pay and benefits. They also said the company liberally displayed QR codes to make it easy to cancel union membership, which lawyers said was a breach of British law that prohibited companies from making offers to employees to not be in a union. Amazon said that attending the meetings was voluntary and that GMB also held meetings in the warehouse. . . .

Agonizingly short. But we will keep our head up, because this very same labor discontent in Britain largely forced a sea-change in British government, just this summer -- a month ago. Onward, with hope just the same -- Mr. Bezos cannot resist the arc of history -- toward progress. . . forever. He cannot beat the tide, in due course. Across the pond, or here.

नमस्ते