Amazon workers to protest warehouse working conditions on Black Friday

Some Amazon staff are
protesting working conditions.
Matt
Cardy / Stringer / Getty Images

• Amazon workers across Europe are staging protests on
  Black Friday in anger at “inhuman conditions” inside Amazon’s
  warehouses.
• Protests will take the form of demonstrations in the
  UK, while in Spain and Italy workers are planning a 24-hour
  strike.
• A spokesman for British trade union GMB
  told Business Insider that the protestors want to raise
  awareness and get Amazon to the table to talk about worker
  safety.

Amazon warehouse workers are going to voice their anger at
working conditions in coordinated protests across Europe on Black
Friday.

British trade union GMB is working with hundreds of staff to
stage demonstrations outside five fulfilment centres on Friday,
while workers in Spain and Italy are planning a 24-hour strike.

In the UK, a mixture of off-shift Amazon workers and GMB members
will demonstrate outside Amazon warehouses waving banners and
handing out leaflets, a GMB spokesman told Business Insider.

Read more:

“They treat us like disposable parts”: An Amazon warehouse worker
is waging war on working conditions in a new anonymous newspaper
column

The biggest protest will take place at Rugeley, near Birmingham,
with upwards of 100 people expected to attend. After
demonstrating at the warehouse, they will march to a rally at the
Lea Hall Miners’ Club, where shadow work and pensions minister,
Jack Dromey, will speak.

The GMB spokesman said protestors are looking to raise awareness
rather than disrupt Black Friday sales. “All we want is to get
Amazon around the table,” he said.

GMB General Secretary Tim Roache said in a statement that working
conditions at Amazon are “frankly inhuman.” He added: “They are
breaking bones, being knocked unconscious and being taken away in
ambulances.”

Using a series of Freedom of Information requests, the
GMB discovered in June that ambulances were called out 600
times to 14 Amazon warehouses over the past three years.

An Amazon protest in Germany earlier this
year.
Sean
Gallup/Getty

At the Rugeley site, ambulances were called out 115 times over
that period for electric shocks, bleeding, chest pains, and major
trauma. Three times the ambulances were called out for
“pregnancy/maternity.”

“At a similar sized supermarket distribution warehouse a few
miles away, there were just eight call outs during the same
period,” the GMB found.

“It is an awful place to work”

Ahead of the protest on Friday, the GMB collected statements from
members who work at the warehouses.

“I am pregnant and they put me to stand 10 hours without a chair
… They are telling me to work hard even [sic] they know I am
pregnant. I am feeling depressed when I am at work,” said one.

Another added: “It is an awful place to work, can’t breath or
voice an opinion, [sic] feel like a trapped animal with lack of
support and respect.”

Amazon’s working conditions have come under fire before, notably
from US Senator Bernie Sanders who campaigned to
make CEO Jeff Bezos raise Amazon’s minimum wage and said he
would
launch an investigation into “unsafe working conditions.”

Amazon
raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour in October, but

it has refuted horror stories from its warehouses as a
“myth.”

Business Insider contacted Amazon for comment.