Amazon won plaudits for announcing on Tuesday that it was increasing minimum pay in the US and UK. Minimum pay for permanent and temporary staff in the UK will rise by £1.50 an hour to £9.50 outside London and by £2.20 to £10.50 in the capital.
The GMB said that staff will also no longer be eligible for cash bonuses they can currently earn if they meet productivity and attendance targets over the peak Christmas trading period.
Amazon has now been criticised for slashing benefits for UK warehouse workers, offsetting at least half of a big pay rise it announced. The removal of employee share and incentive schemes could cost thousands of workers £1,500 in a single year, according to the GMB union, which accused the online retailer of imposing “a stealth tax on its own wage increase”.
The retailer’s warehouse workers currently receive one Amazon share, worth $1,961 (£1,508), at the end of every year they work at the company, and an additional share once every five years. If they hold on to the shares for two years, they can cash them in tax-free, according to the GMB. The loss of that payout would be equivalent to roughly half the £3,120 rise in pay promised to the average Amazon warehouse worker outside London. These workers currently earn about £17,000.
Tim Roache, the GMB’s general secretary, said Amazon had not said “a dicky bird about cutting staff benefits” when the new hourly pay rates were announced. Roache added: “This is a basically a stealth tax by the employer on its own wage increase – a clear case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. “If Jeff Bezos – the richest man in the world – really wants to give hardworking staff a pay rise, he should let them keep their share options as well as increasing their hourly rate.”
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