Amazon UK warehouse workers to protest across Black Friday

Hundreds of Amazon warehouse workers are expected to demonstrate at the online retail giant’s warehouses in Rugeley, Swansea, Peterborough, Milton Keynes and Warrington this Black Friday.

GMB, the union for Amazon workers, helped organise the Black Friday protests across the UK in anger at what it calls “inhuman conditions” staff work under at the company’s warehouses. Figures unearthed by GMB revealed a total of 602 reports have been made from Amazon warehouses to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Meanwhile GMB members working in Amazon warehouses have reported working in “constant agony”, not having time to go to the toilet and a heavily pregnant woman forced to work standing. Amazon workers in Italy and Spain are also expected to take action on the same day.

Tim Roache, GMB general secretary, said: “The conditions our members at Amazon are working under are frankly inhuman. They are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in ambulances. We’re standing up and saying enough is enough, these are people making Amazon its money. People with kids, homes, bills to pay – they’re not robots.

“Jeff Bezos is the richest bloke on the planet; he can afford to sort this out.  You’d think making the workplace safer so people aren’t carted out of the warehouse in an ambulance is in everyone’s interest, but Amazon seemingly have no will to get round the table with us as the union representing hundreds of their staff. Working people and the communities Amazon operates in deserve better than this. That’s what we’re campaigning for.”

Amazon has responded to the claims calling them “simply wrong”.