UK Amazon workers seek union

Amazon.com workers are trying to unionize at a major warehouse in the U.K., as the company’s standoff with labor groups enters a new front.

The GMB officially applied for union recognition Friday on behalf of its members at a distribution center in Coventry, in England’s West Midlands.

If successful, it would be the first British labor group to win the right to negotiate with the U.S. technology company.

Amazon workers in Coventry have already held strikes to protest pay raises that fall below the U.K.’s stubbornly high level of inflation.

Staff at two other warehouses are also being balloted for potential industrial action. Still, by formally unionizing, workers in Coventry would increase their bargaining power through direct negotiations over pay and the right to have union representatives within the warehouse.

Markets drop amid rate fear

Stocks and bonds floundered after Wall Street lost faith that a pause in the Federal Reserve’s rate hiking cycle was a given.

Swaps traders are now pricing in a one-in-10 chance there will be another interest rate hike at the next Fed meeting in June, after odds had been tilted in favor a pause earlier in the week.

The S&P 500 ended the week down 0.3% while the Nasdaq 100 had a 0.6% advance.

Early in the session gains were stamped out Friday after a preliminary University of Michigan sentiment survey showed consumers expect prices to rise at a 3.2% annual rate over the next five to 10 years, a 12-year high.

Bank stocks were weak with PacWest Bancorp dropping 3.0% and JPMorgan Chase sliding 1.4%.

From wire reports