On Wednesday, January 25, Amazon workers began their first official strike action in the UK by walking out of the online retail giant’s Coventry warehouse in protest against a stipulated 50% pay rise.
An estimated 300 Amazon workers were expected to drop whatever they were doing and join 24-hour picket lines which will be taking place outside Amazon’s warehouse in Coventry.
According to some news reports, the strike action had begun at midnight.
The workers union is demanding an increase in their pay from £10 to £15 per hour, but Amazon had only offered to Pay 50p per hour.
Meanwhile, the dispute is not expected to affect deliveries at Coventry, as they provide stock to other Amazon fulfillment centers, rather than directly to customers.
Amazon said its pay offer represented a pay hike to between £10.50 and £11.45 per hour, depending on the worker’s location.
This industrial action is expected to be the first in a planned series of walk-outs in Coventry and other Amazon facilities in the United Kingdom.
The dispute is one of the many raging across the public and private sectors in the UK, as workers demand pay increases from their respective companies to make up for the surging inflation in the west.
