UK union fails to gain recognition at Amazon warehouse in tight vote

By James Davey

LONDON (Reuters) -A British union has narrowly failed to secure the right to formally represent workers at an Amazon warehouse, with staff rejecting the chance to become the first site outside the U.S. to force the ecommerce giant to negotiate labour terms.

Amazon's victory at the distribution site in Coventry, central England, was a blow for the trade union movement and came on the same day Britain's new Labour government set out its legislative agenda, promising to give workers more rights and unions more power.

The government plans to simplify the process of statutory union recognition, but it remains unclear what this will mean for the Coventry site.

Under current rules the union cannot apply again for statutory recognition there for three years.

The GMB union said on Wednesday 49.5% of the 2,600 workers who voted backed union recognition at the site, falling just short of the majority required in a ballot overseen by the independent Central Arbitration Committee.

The union said it lost by just 28 votes and will pursue a legal challenge against Amazon over what it called "union-busting tactics".

Amazon's treatment of workers has been in the spotlight for years and it has historically opposed unionisation, saying its preference is to resolve issues with employees directly.

Its workers in Staten Island, New York, forced the company to recognise a trade union in the U.S. for the first time in 2022, although since then staff at two other New York warehouses and one in Alabama have voted against the move.

Amazon thanked the workers who voted in the Coventry ballot.

"Across Amazon, we place enormous value on engaging directly with our employees and having daily conversations with them. It’s an essential part of our work culture," a spokesperson for the company said.

Amazon says it interacts with unions on many aspects of its operations in several countries such as Italy and Germany - where it is required by law - as well as France, Spain and Canada.

ANTI-UNION MESSAGES

Staff at the Coventry site have been involved in a dispute over pay and union recognition for more than a year, and have carried out numerous strikes at Amazon, which employs about 75,000 staff in the UK, making it one of the country's top ten private sector employers.

The GMB union accused Amazon of deliberately frustrating its recognition bid by recruiting hundreds of additional workers at the site, making it harder to achieve the ballot threshold. A charge Amazon denies.

The union said Amazon had also bombarded workers with anti-union messages and pressured them into cancelling their union membership during the ballot period.

Amazon had displayed posters at the site with a QR code that generated an e-mail to the union asking for membership to be cancelled.

“This is just the beginning. Amazon now faces a legal challenge, while the fire lit by workers in Coventry and across the UK is still burning," Stuart Richards, GMB senior organiser, said.

Sarah Harrop, employment partner at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said the failure to get recognition was a significant blow for the GMB.

"Their only option now when looking at recognition would be to continue dialogue and to seek to persuade Amazon to enter into some form of voluntary arrangement."

"That seems very unlikely, however, given where things have ended up," she said.

(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Kate Holton, William James and Jane Merriman)