One of Britain’s biggest unions wants the government to favour companies that recognise unions when awarding taxpayer-funded contracts.
After finding that Amazon had been handed £1 billion in work despite being accused of “union-busting” activities, the GMB will issue a motion at the Labour Party’s conference today.
It wants companies that recognise a trade union and that “properly allow” unions to speak to their employees about recognition to be considered more favourably by public bodies when they weigh up contract awards.
In July workers at Amazon’s distribution centre in Coventry narrowly missed out on becoming the first site outside the United States to force the company to negotiate labour terms. The GMB said that of the 2,600 staff who had voted, 49.5 per cent had backed union recognition, falling 28 votes, or 0.6 per cent, short of the majority required in a ballot overseen by the independent Central Arbitration Committee.
The union is launching a legal challenge against the ecommerce group over claims that Amazon tried to coerce staff into cancelling their union membership, making it harder to achieve the ballot. Amazon denies the claim.
The majority of the £1.04 billion in contracts given to Amazon over the past year were for cloud-hosting services, according to GMB’s analysis of data provided by Tussell. Amazon Web Services is the biggest cloud computing provider in the world.
Gary Smith, the GMB’s general secretary, said the government needed to be clear with Amazon that it must “treat workers with respect” if the company was to be awarded hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. “That means proper pay, ending the punishing workloads and surveillance that makes staff sick and listening to workers’ voices through their union, the GMB,” he said.
“Repealing anti-trade union laws has been a good start, but ministers must now forge ahead with promised reforms to archaic rules that make it so difficult for workers’ unions to be recognised.”
The Labour government has promised to give workers more rights and unions more power. It plans to simplify the process of statutory union recognition. Under existing rules the union cannot reapply for statutory union recognition for three years.
A spokesman for Amazon said: “Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have. Across Amazon, including in our fulfilment centres, we place enormous value on having daily conversations and engagement with our employees. It’s a strong part of our work culture. We value that direct relationship and so do our employees.” Employees had told the company that they wanted to cancel their membership but could not find a way to do so, Amazon said, so information had been provided to help.