Amazon workers across Europe will protest 'inhuman' warehouse working conditions on Black Friday

Matt Cardy / Stringer / Getty Images

Some Amazon staff are protesting working conditions.

• 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.

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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.

Sean Gallup/Getty

An Amazon protest in Germany earlier this year.

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.