Amazon warehouse workers stage Black Friday strikes and protests around world

In the UK, hundreds of members of the GMB union are staging strikes or protests at a number of Amazon warehouses, including a protest outside its fulfilment centre in Coventry.

Workers are demanding a wage rise from £10.50 to £15 an hour as the cost of living crisis hits household budgets.

However, participating in the action in the UK could mean that protesters miss out on the second part of a £500 bonus Amazon agreed for tens of thousands of frontline workers.

The GMB argued that linking the payment to staff attendance could be viewed as an illegal strike-busting move.

In London, security guards and CCTV operators at Harrods are also going on strike on Black Friday, including staging a protest outside the luxury Knightsbridge store, the first of 12 days of action through the festive period.

Last month, Harrods, which is owned by the Qatar Investment Authority, reported an annual profit of £51m, more than doubled the pay of its managing director to £2.3m and revealed it had collected almost £6m in government support under the Covid furlough scheme.

Meanwhile, the industry body UKHospitality said a series of planned rail strikes in the run-up to Christmas would cost UK restaurants, pubs, clubs and bars £1.5bn, and called on the government to bring all partners to the table to try to reach a solution.

Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said the strikes would go ahead, after a first meeting with transport secretary Mark Harper to try to resolve the dispute on Thursday.

Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of UKHospitality, said the disruption and financial cost of the strikes will cause another lost Christmas on the scale of the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid last year.