The minimum starting pay for employees at its UK operations was raised by Amazon.com Inc by up to 50 pence to between 11 pounds $13.50 and 12 pounds per hour, a move that has angered its union that had demanded a bigger hike.
The pay rise comes less than a week after hundreds of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry in central England staged a walkout over pay this year.
The message is clear: This new pay rate is an insult, said Amanda Gearing, senior organiser of GMB, the union that represents more than 500 Amazon workers.
In the next few days we will be consulting and announcing a new wave of action. The union said that the Amazon Coventry workers are demanding 15 pounds an hour to deal with a cost-of-living crisis that has sparked strikes across sectors in Britain over the last several months.
Our minimum pay has risen by 10 per cent and by more than 37 per cent over the past seven months, according to Amazon.
In January, Amazon, which has 70,000 workers in the UK, announced plans to shut down three warehouses in Britain this year, which will affect 1,200 jobs, but said workers will be given the chance to transfer to other units.
Three older British warehouses are located in Gourock, Doncaster and Hemel Hampstead.