Increase will lift minimum rates by 9.8% and comes after online retailer
defeated GMB union bid for bargaining rights on pay
Amazon has announced a pay rise worth nearly 10% for tens of thousands of UK
employees, after defeating an attempt by the GMB trade union for bargaining
rights over pay and conditions.
The online retailer said the increase would lift minimum pay rates by 9.8% to
between £13.50 and £14.50 an hour, depending on location. Staff with at least
three years’ service will receive a minimum of between £13.75 and £14.75 an
hour.
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Tag - Amazon
GMB union urges Health and Safety Executive to investigate ‘shocking’ figures
revealed by the Observer
Ambulances have been called out to Amazon warehouses more than 1,400 times in
the past five years, the Observer can reveal. The figures, which were described
as shocking by the GMB trade union, raise fresh questions about safety at the
American giant’s UK workplaces.
Amazon centres in Dunfermline and Bristol had the most ambulance callouts in
Britain, listing 161 and 125 across the period respectively.
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Move is the latest of a string of CMA investigations into technology tie-ups
Amazon’s $4bn investment into US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is to
be examined in the latest investigation into technology tie-ups by the UK’s
competition watchdog.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Thursday that it was
launching a preliminary investigation into the deal, before deciding whether to
refer it for an in-depth review.
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Their shares have fallen 11.8% from last month’s peak but more AI breakthroughs
may reassure investors
It has been tough week for the magnificent seven, the group of technology stocks
that has played a dominant role in the US stock market, buoyed by investor
excitement about breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
Last year Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, the chipmaker Nvidia, Google’s parent,
Alphabet, Facebook’s owner, Meta, and Elon Musk’s Tesla accounted for half the
gains in the S&P 500 share index. But doubts about the return on AI investment,
along with a mixed set of quarterly results, investors shifting their focus to
other sectors and weak US economic data have hit the group over the past month.
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Firm reported a loss in its second quarter and said it would cut 15% of its
workforce to cut costs and compete with rivals
Intel, the chipmaker, has announced plans to cut more than 15,000 jobs as it
tries to cut billions of dollars in costs and turn its business around to
compete with more successful rivals.
Shares in the company sank 19% as a string of leading technology stocks came
under pressure on Thursday following a fresh batch of lackluster earnings that
contributed to a sell-off on Wall Street.
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TUC insists fight will go on after GMB fails to secure right to represent
retailer’s staff by just 29 votes
* Business live – latest updates
The TUC has insisted the battle for union recognition at Amazon will go on,
after workers at the US retailer’s Coventry warehouse rejected the right to
collective bargaining by a majority of just 29 votes.
In a historic ballot that could have forced Amazon to recognise a union for the
first time in the UK, 50.5% of the workers who voted chose to refuse the
proposal for the GMB union to represent them. If 15 had switched sides it would
have gone the other way.
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In Coventry, the GMB has been canvassing hard to represent workers officially –
and the potentially historic result is due this week
On a traffic island on the outskirts of Coventry, armed with handmade signs and
a stack of orange bucket hats, a small but noisy team of organisers from the GMB
union are taking on Amazon.
More than 3,000 staff here – “associates,” as Amazon calls them – were given the
opportunity to vote in a historic ballot last week that could force the company
to recognise a union for the first time in the UK. It is one of several tussles
over union recognition globally at the retail-to-cloud-services group founded by
Jeff Bezos in his garage in 1994 and now worth more than $2 trillion.
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The Fairwork trio talk about their new book on the ‘extraction machine’,
exposing the repetitive labour, often in terrible conditions, that big tech is
using to create artificial intelligence
* Meet Mercy and Anita – the African workers driving the AI revolution, for
just over a dollar an hour
James Muldoon is a reader in management at the University of Essex, Mark Graham
a professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and Callum Cant a senior lecturer
at the University of Essex business school. They work together at Fairwork, a
project that appraises the working conditions in digital workplaces, and they
are co-authors of Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI.
Why did you write the book?
James Muldoon: The idea for the book emerged out of field work we did in Kenya
and Uganda on the data annotation industry. We spoke to a number of data
annotators, and the working conditions were just horrendous. And we thought this
is a story that everyone needs to hear. People working for less than $2 an hour
on insecure contracts, work that is predominantly outsourced to the global south
because of how difficult and dangerous it can be.
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Proposed sale of 25m shares disclosed in notice on Tuesday after stock hit
all-time high of $200.43 during session
Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos is planning to sell almost $5bn
worth of shares in the e-commerce giant, a regulatory filing showed, after its
stock hit a record high.
The proposed sale of 25m shares was disclosed in a notice filed after market
hours on Tuesday. The stock had hit an all-time high of $200.43 during the
session. It has jumped more than 30% so far this year, outpacing the 4% gain in
the Dow Jones Industrial Average index.
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Smart display is the control centre for Alexa-connected devices anyone in the
home can use
Amazon’s latest Alexa device feels like the missing piece in making a home fully
smart and acts as a hub for controlling lights, doors, cameras, timers and
heating.
The Echo Hub arrives ready to be the touchscreen controller for your smart home,
and is a cut-price option for a device that usually has to be either
professionally installed, costing thousands, or a DIY job that requires more
than a little expertise.
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