Between August 2022 and July 2024, GMB Union membership at Amazon’s BHX4 Coventry warehouse skyrocketed, with 37 days of strike action resulting in a 28.5% pay rise. Yet despite this, the union narrowly lost a ballot that would have forced Amazon to grant formal recognition.
Based on ethnographic research and reflective essays from worker-leaders and organizers, this book offers a rich case study of the factors contributing to the union’s successes and setbacks. It provides a practical organizing model applicable beyond Amazon, offering strategies to engage the workforce, sustain support and develop leadership. An essential toolkit for those navigating the complexities of evolving labour practices, with particular relevance for precarious workers and workplaces where access is limited.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
Essay 1: What We Have Achieved Is Not a List of Accomplishments, It’s a Transformation - Ceferina Floresca Javier
2. Introducing the GMB Union
Essay 2: Managing an Organising Team in the Amazon Campaign - Amanda Gearing
3. Reaching the Whole Workforce
Essay 3: How Amazon Tried To Persuade Workers Against the Union - Louveza Iqbal
Essay 4: Stopping, Watching and Listening: The Importance of Mindfulness for Organising - Rachel Fagan
4. Sustaining Action and Engagement
Essay 5: Reflections on the Fight for Statutory Union Recognition at BHX4 - Stuart Richards
5. Developing Leadership
Essay 6: Representing Members Inside Amazon - Paramanathan Pradeep
Essay 7: Agitate, Educate, Organise! How We Trained and Developed Workplace Leaders - Tom Rigby
6. Responding to Workers’ Needs and Concerns
Essay 8: Applying Personal Experience and Community Work in Organising at Amazon - Ferdousara Uddin
7. Building Wider Support
Essay 9: Why We Need an International Alliance Against Amazon - Garfield Hylton
8. Principles of the Coventry Model
9. Conclusion
Appendix 1. Case Study Questions for Teaching
Appendix 2. Methodology: An Activist Ethnography
Appendix 3. Coding Framework
About the Author :
Tom Vickers is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the GMB-NTU Work Futures Research Observatory at Nottingham Trent University. He has been engaged with movements resisting capitalism exploitation and oppression for more than two decades.
Review :
"A comprehensive, wide-ranging and timely study of Amazon workers' ongoing struggle for a collective union voice. A thought-provoking assessment of the power of workers standing together against the unacceptable face of capitalism" Paul Nowak, TUC General Secretary
"It’s great to see a book that focuses on a union’s strategy and tactics to challenge the might of Amazon’s labour exploitation. The voice of workers is loud and clear. All trade union organizers should read this book to understand how to collectivise a diverse workforce with a virulently anti-union employer." Jane Holgate, University of Leeds
"A powerful reminder that digital capital is not invincible, as told by the workers rising against it." Alessandro Delfanti, University of Toronto and author of The Warehouse:
Workers and Robots at Amazon
