As Sadler argues, unions’ ‘biggest assets are the volume of people, their members’ willingness to voluntarily participate in union activities, and their members’ collective ingenuity’. Consequently, securing and maintaining voluntary participation is crucial to union success. This is expressed in the GMB organizing principle that: ‘Each workplace should be organised as if a ballot for action was due.’ In a case like Amazon, where there are numerous issues that many workers feel must be addressed, a sustained process of change-oriented action is called for. This chapter examines the challenges that were encountered at BHX4 in sustaining action and engagement, followed by the GMB's response.

Challenges in sustaining action and engagement

This section begins by discussing migrants’ social and legal position in Britain, which produced distinct patterns of precarity and limitations on rights within the BHX4 workforce and consequently created challenges for sustained union engagement. Discussion then moves on to financial barriers to sustained action, which were exacerbated by the unequal spatial relations of global capitalism that made many workers’ families reliant on the money they sent home. This is followed by a discussion of the impact of British legislation governing strikes on workers who were not yet familiar with British institutions. The section concludes with a review of Amazon's direct attempts to disrupt and curtail union activity at BHX4, which relied on the company's near-total monopoly control over the space of the warehouse and workers’ time within it.