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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...