Exhausted Amazon Drivers Are Working 11-Hour Shifts For Less Than Minimum Wage (mirror.co.uk)

schwit1 quotes the Daily Mirror: Drivers are being asked to deliver up to 200 parcels a day for Amazon while earning less than the minimum wage, a Sunday Mirror investigation reveals today... Many routinely exceed the legal maximum shift of 11 hours and finish their days dead on their feet. Yet they have so little time for food or toilet stops they snatch hurried meals on the run and urinate into plastic bottles they keep in their vans. They say they often break speed limits to meet targets that take no account of delays such as ice, traffic jams or road closures.

Many claim they are employed in a way that means they have no rights to holiday or sickness pay. And some say they take home as little as £160 for a five-day week amid conditions described by one lawyer as "almost Dickensian"... The Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency has vowed to investigate after drivers contacted them to complain about conditions.

Comments

Why is this so cheap?

[pablo_max]

Something you will never hear an American ask themselves.

Generally speaking, when you are buying so much "shit" for so much cheaper than the rest of the world, there is a good chance that this is only possible because a lot of people down the line are being fucked.
But hey... cheap tv for you so who give a fuck, am i right?

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I think that’s probably true for quite a few Americans; but by no means all of them. However if stereotyping makes you fell better, who am I to judge?

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[ScentCone]

Of course this has nothing to do with any actual merchandise (in the US, OR in the UK, which is what the article is about). Which you know, but are pretending you don't.

This is about last-mile delivery service, apparently a good deal of which is being done by contractors who sign up to complete the work at a fixed price without having the foresight to contemplate the nature of the seasonal traffic for a few weeks in December.

Re: Why is this so cheap?

[nehumanuscrede]

I'm the wierd American who prefers quality over cost. I refuse to deal with Black Friday bullshit and just stay away from it.

I'll happily pay MORE for an item if the quality warrants it.

Re:Why is this so cheap?

[Kjella]

Something you will never hear any consumer ask themselves. Well, apart from wondering if it's a "Rollex" they're buying. The whole idea of capitalism is that money should go to the business that's most efficient, how can you tell if they're just brilliant at process automation and reducing overhead or exploiting the employees? And it's usually not their employees, it's a conglomerate of vendors, sub-contractors, partners, shipping/distribution/sales channels and so on that's five steps removed from the label on the box.

I'll admit that here I expect other regulatory bodies to step in and make sure what's happening is done legally, like those who oversee commercial transportation and work/rest hours, regulations on wages and overtime pay and so on. The general public is not supposed to have that level of internal detail to inspect it themselves, since it'd be a treasure trove of competition-sensitive information. All you'd get are haphazard reactions to real or manufactured scandals leaking to the press.

True, in a few limited areas like child labor, animal testing of products, trees from the rain forest and the use of certain chemicals pressure from the top has actually made an impact. But on basic working conditions like wages and such I don't think that'll ever be effective. It's either the government stepping in through law or the workers uniting through unions. To expect consumers to solve that problem for them I think is foolish. I'm not always going to go with the lowest bidder, but I'm going with the best offer for me.

Re: MAGA

[fluffernutter]

These people are obviously desperate for a job for some reason. Don't pretend like anyone can be a candidate for any job that is available. It doesn't mean they should have to starve, or conmit crimes to make christmas bearable.

11-hour days?

[Anonymous Coward]

11 hour days? Holy first world problems.

Not to say this report isn't important or that Amazon shouldn't do better, but wow is the first world out of touch.

Re:11-hour days?

[Bert64]

Well part of what makes these first world countries is the higher standards of living and various employment laws to prevent unscrupulous employers from abusing their employees.

Re:11-hour days?

[OzPeter]

Amazon uses boxes grossly larger than needed

I have never understood this. I get boxes from Amazon that are WAY too big for the contents all the time. This must be costing them money, for the cardboard, padding, weight, and volume. Why do they do this?

It seems to me that it would be trivial to write some code to add up the size of the contents to pick the right box. A robot could then pull the box and add it to the picking bin.

There is also a cost to stocking shipping boxes that just happen to be the right size for the products you buy. Making things a uniform size has an efficiency (and hence minimizes cost) of its own. EG look at how cargo containers transformed shipping.

Do you really think that given the number of boxes that Amazon ships that they haven't looked at the price/performance of differing box sizes?

The gig economy has been about this since day 1

[rsilvergun]

side stepping minimum wage laws. Thing is, I'm guessing 99% of /.ers aren't in a position to worry about this. What we _are_ in a position to worry about is how 40 years of stagnant wages mean it's harder and harder for us to make ends meet. So we'll turn a blind eye. Thing is this will come around to bite us eventually, but when you're barely hanging on eventually doesn't really matter. Me? I'm just trying to get my kid through college and to hell with everything else. And that about sums it up. The working class is too busy surviving to band together and make a positive change. It's almost as if somebody designed it that way...

Surely not

[JustNiz]

But Bezos is a democrat... you know... that party that is all about the people.

Re: MAGA

[MoarSauce123]

It also matters how unemployment is counted. In the US the number is severely skewed in favor of those in office. Those who sign up for such jobs typically have not much else to chose from. More opportunity comes from more education and that is in most places getting prohibitively expensive. As far as the UK goes, once they brexited and the economy tanks worse than during Thatcher's time the number of people who can afford ordering crap on Amazon will go down drastically.

Trump is a symptom

[rsilvergun]

not the cause. The cause is 40 years of stagnant wages as all the gains from decades of increased productivity go to the top 1%.

The working class actually tried to organize. Remember Occupy WallStreet? It was shut down by a coordinated effort of the FBI and local police using legal tools put in place by the Patriot Act that everybody pinkie swore would never be used against American Citizens.

What gets my goat is the same folks who keep putting these jokers in power yell the loudest about government overreach except when it screws with somebody they don't like. Whether it's liberal elites, Muslims, college students or just plain whatever racial background they don't like. It's all a scam. It's how the Aristocracy has maintained power for centuries: get the working class to blame their plight on somebody else (Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Mongolians, the Untouchable class, whatever) while they laugh all the way to the bank. Works too.

THis is why Unions were invented.

[goombah99]

The history of the trade Unions in the US starts with Train Unions. And those formed not to demand higher pay but to demand better working conditions, less overwork and gaurenteed return to home after days traveling far from home. Removal of bars in company towns was another demand (train workers were often left to rot in Railtoad owned hotels (bunkhouses) far from home until such a time as they were needed. They had to pay the hotel cost to the owners and they were in the middle of no where so the only thing to do was drink. Which created alcoholics other railroaders were afraid to work with.

THey need a union. that's what unions are for.

Re: MAGA

[Calydor]

Going through rush hour traffic every single day, dealing with road rage, near-misses, all the time with an unforgiving schedule that doesn't let you deliver just 180 parcels that day.

For less than minimum wage.

Yeah, that does fit the definition of a brutal job.

Re:Clinton didn't want to be rid of them

[Altrag]

a party who's central plank is laissez faire capitalism

Sadly, its worse than that. They want the government out of the picture as long as profits are rolling in, but as soon as shit goes south they're quite happy to beg for giant bailouts on the back of the taxpayer rather than simply letting failed companies fail as should happen in a laissez faire system.

If we look at ISPs (with all the recent flutter over net neutrality..) Their main argument against NN is that regulations are bad competition will fix it. Yet those same ISPs are continually trying to block competition, frequently by lobbying for you guessed it .. regulations .. that impede if not outright block new competitors.