Call for Amazon lock-out

A campaign has been launched by the GMB general union to force the Co-operative Group to remove Amazon lockers from its stores. One hundred and sixty Co-op stores provide lockers that allow Amazon customers to purchase goods online and pick up in-store.

The GMB has previously raised the issue with the Co-operative Group chief executive, Richard Pennycook, questioning a partnership with Amazon which appears at odds with the Co-op’s reputation for ethical business.

Amazon employs around 22,000 staff in the UK, mostly on casual contracts and mostly paid on or close to the minimum wage. The union has pointed to “slave-like working conditions” and poor levels of pay at Amazon warehouses, as well as poor treatment of agency staff who are made to turn up for work and then told they are not required.

It also points to “a culture of bullying and harassment” of staff, involving electronic surveillance, repression of trade union activity, as well as the company’s “rampant tax avoidance”.

In the absence of a positive response from the Co-operative Group, the GMB is now launching a wider campaign within the broader Co-operative movement.

Martin Smith, GMB national officer, said: “Co-operative members need to know that union activity in the Amazon depots in UK has to be kept underground for fear of reprisals. So hostile are Amazon that union organisation is driven underground, adopting the tactics of the French resistance or human rights campaigns in totalitarian regimes.”

www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/get-amazon-out-of-co-op-stores