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GMB union says 49.5% of those who voted backed recognition

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Union says Amazon ( AMZN ) facing legal challenge

(Adds union comment in paragraphs 2-5, Amazon ( AMZN ) comment

paragraphs 6-7)

By James Davey

LONDON, July 17 (Reuters) - A British union has narrowly

failed to secure the right to formally represent workers at an

Amazon ( AMZN ) warehouse, with staff rejecting the chance to

become the first site outside the U.S. to force the ecommerce

company to negotiate labour terms.

The GMB union said 49.5% of the 2,600 workers who voted

backed union recognition at the distribution site in Coventry,

central England, falling just short of a majority required in a

blow for the UK trade union movement.

The union said Amazon ( AMZN ) deliberately frustrated its

recognition bid by recruiting hundreds of additional workers at

the site and pressuring existing workers into cancelling their

union membership so the union no longer had the numbers to make

the ballot threshold. Charges Amazon ( AMZN ) rejects.

The union said Amazon ( AMZN ) would now face a legal challenge over

what it said were "union-busting tactics".

"This is just the beginning. Amazon ( AMZN ) now faces a legal

challenge, while the fire lit by workers in Coventry and across

the UK is still burning," Stuart Richards, GMB senior organiser,

said.

Amazon ( AMZN ) thanked everyone who voted in the ballot.

"Across Amazon ( AMZN ), we place enormous value on engaging directly

with our employees and having daily conversations with them.

It's an essential part of our work culture," a spokesperson for

the company said.

The Coventry workers have been involved in a dispute over

pay and union recognition for more than a year, and have carried

out numerous strikes at Amazon ( AMZN ), which employs about 75,000 staff

in the UK, making it one of the country's top ten private sector

employers.

Amazon's ( AMZN ) treatment of workers has been in the spotlight for

years and it has historically opposed unionisation, saying its

preference has been to resolve issues with employees directly.

Its workers in Staten Island, New York, forced the company

to recognise a trade union in the U.S. for the first time in

2022, although since then staff at two other New York warehouses

and one in Alabama have voted against the move.

Amazon ( AMZN ) says it interacts with unions on many aspects of its

operations in several countries such as Italy and Germany -

where it is required by law - as well as France, Spain and

Canada.

Britain's new Labour government has promised to give workers

more rights and unions more power, saying current employment

laws are outdated, a drag on economic growth and a major factor

in the UK's worst period of industrial relations since the

1980s.

It plans to update trade union legislation, removing

restrictions on trade union activity and ensuring industrial

relations are based around good faith negotiation and

bargaining.

But it is not clear yet how those proposals will unfold, and

what it would mean for a company like Amazon ( AMZN ).