£25MILLION PAY RISES.. IN FIRST 100 DAYS
Now Unite’s new chief takes aim at Amazon
UNITE’S Sharon Graham celebrates 100 days in charge of Britain’s biggest trade union tomorrow – and has already won £25million in pay deals for workers.
She took over from long-time General Secretary Len McCluskey at the end of August and has overseen 40 disputes so far – winning 26 of them, from refuse workers to tram drivers.
And today Ms Graham tells the Sunday Mirror she now has Amazon in her sights when it comes to workers’ rights. She’s joining forces with unions in Germany and the US to take on the company’s billionaire boss Jeff Bezos. Ms Graham is driving a “groundbreaking” move to form a “transnational combine” across the three countries which make up 80% of the web giant’s market. She wants them to jointly propose a ‘neutrality agreement’ to Amazon where workers are encouraged to engage with unions “without fear of being sacked”. Ms Graham explained: “It’s totally unprecedented.
“We’ve had our initial discussions, then we’re having another set in January. When you think about it, why haven’t we done anything like this before?
“I’m very excited.”
Most of the giant union-busting firm’s profits come from Amazon Web Services – a cloud computing platform whose major clients include our Government.
Ms Graham sees this as “big leverage”. She said: “If our governments are Amazon’s biggest clients in the most profitable part of their business, then we need to make sure those governments say, ‘If you want our contract, you have to make sure you give neutrality to trade unions’. It would be groundbreaking if we get it – and of course we must do it.
“We we have to deal with what’s going on in Amazon because they are pacesetting bad behaviour.”
Other changes under Ms Graham’s watch will see cash that Unite previously spent on funding the Labour party instead being used for campaigns that affect workers, such as care reform.