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

The beauty of borderless commerce in the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

> Many claim they are employed in a way that means they have no rights to holiday or sickness pay.

Maybe they should go on strike? Oh no wait, Amazon found a way around that pesky annoyance: they'll just ship orders from an Amazon warehouse in another EU country.

Re:Things to come

[Bert64]

If you paid them for waiting, then you'd need to cap the number of drivers active in any given area, restrict the areas drivers are allowed to wait and force drivers to take jobs on a rota, otherwise you could have drivers just "waiting" and getting paid in the middle of nowhere so they won't get any passengers.
Conversely, sparsely populated areas would never get any service because it would be unprofitable to pay someone to wait there.

When i lived in a small village there was a part time taxi driver who usually worked on vehicle maintenance/restorations... Because of the low population he might drive one or two jobs a week and make a few extra pennies, and when doing so he'd temporarily down tools on his other job and return to it when he got back. Sometimes if the passenger went to the nearest town he'd use the opportunity to go shopping.
Calling a driver from the nearest town could mean waiting more than an hour for them to arrive, and paying a fare just for them to arrive, plus wherever you wanted to go.

I don't have to ask

[rsilvergun]

I know. But what do you propose I do about it? We couldn't even keep Trump out of the Whitehouse. His tax plan is going to f'n kill me (kid in college and I'm in a state with SALT). I'm getting the shit kicked out of me. So are a lot of working class Americans. And all I hear from anyone else ever is: "Why don't you go back to school and update your skills?". Like that's so damn easy.

America abandoned it's working class. Do you really think they care about the rest of the world that abandoned them?

Re:I don't have to ask

[DNS-and-BIND]

Liberal whites wanted to be rid of the culturally conservative, economically liberal, working-class white voters whom Democrats had courted in the previous decade. Upper-middle-class whites were embarrassed by these people. After all these centuries of white privilege, they never managed to get into a good schoolâ"or even a state collegeâ"and now they were making demands about trade and immigration.

One of the themes that emerges from Shattered (a chronicle of the Clinton campaign) is that the Clinton operation didnâ(TM)t want to make a strong play for working-class white voters in swing states. The Clintonites thought these voters were disposable. That's you.

Re:I don't have to ask

[kevin805]

Oh, why do I do this to myself? I noticed £160 in the blurb and my first thought was "I wonder how much of the comment section is blaming this on Trump?". I should have just ignored the thread.

As to the tax bill, if I may be so direct, you're whining about the working class, and you are in college. If you are in college and are not studying a marketable skill and you don't have a rich family to support you, you are making poor life choices. You don't mention working. Did you pay anything in taxes last year? How much do you expect your taxes to increase by? I'm going to out on a limb and guess that you were not previously itemizing your massive property tax bill if you're a student.

So, can you offer some explanation of how this tax bill is going to negatively impact you?

Re:I don't have to ask

[Anonymous Coward]

"culturally conservative, economically liberal"

What does that mean? Because it sounds like it means:

Someone who thinks homosexual marriage should be illegal, transvestites must use their genetic-gender-determined restroom, civilian gun ownership should be legal but not abortion.....but.....the wealthy should be heavily taxed and the money spent on free providence for the unwealthy (and especially the jobless), including a luxury budget.

That sounds like a strange combination. Are there a lot of people like this?

Not to mention...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason americans have become so complacent about getting shit cheap even if somebody else is getting fucked is because usually said people have been/still are being fucked themselves, and without a better company that is ACTUALLY AND VERIFIABLY BETTER, paying more just means being a bigger sucker and not necessarily helping improve the status quo.

America continues sliding further down the shitter because there *IS NO TRANSPARENCY* making the sort of informed decisions that would allow capitalism to work and be beneficial to all, impossible to achieve.

Capitalism only works with perfect information symmetry, the same as the necessary government transparency (including intelligence agencies!) to make democracy work. You can remain opaque for a short while when a specific operation, or external threat renders it necessary, but the longer you allow it to happen the more out of control the powers and abilities of the 'black box' will get, same as DRM, same as undisclosed government contracts, same as 'casting couch' activities.

Information asymmetry is the biggest threat to every aspect of the world (dis)order, and only by providing symmetry can the common folk make informed decisions that will allow them to wrest control back from the wealthy/politically connected few, the indignantly proud, the obscenely corrupt.

captcha was 'leftward', why yes it is... under some definitions of 'left'.

Re: Why is this so cheap?

[hjf]

Yes. https://www.fool.com/investing...

Re:Asd someone that's worked Seattle Hundreds...

[hey!]

Which illustrates why "solidarity" was a principle of the labor movement, back when there was one in this country. It was also the name of the labor union in Poland that broke the power of the Communist Party.

That is how do you deal with the fact you're too politically insignificant and an indivdidual to do anything about being screwed. Get together with enough other insignificant people that you're not insignificant. It's mind boggling to me that people react with stories of people being treated like shit by claiming they get treated even shittier, as if that were something to be proud of.

Re:The gig economy has been about this since day 1

[guruevi]

My question is: if these kind of stories weren't on the Internet, would it be any different than 20-30 years ago?

When I was young, I worked as a job student (18yo) which comes with all sorts of regulations, I still regularly worked 14h shifts until 4:00am, I was payed my hourly wages and my boss gave me an extra $50 under the table every week and I was more than happy. IF I had twitter back then, everyone would be outraged but I know everyone was doing it back then too. My boss was making ~$1M/year with his little burger shop on the beach, I never was outraged that he made so much more from my extra hours of "illegal" work.

This "gig economy" is similar: young people work "on the side" using these apps, perhaps they already work deliveries for a pizza shop or courier and then they'll get a little extra that they will never report to their bosses or the tax man. In the end they'll work more than they should and they get some extra income. But now they get to Twitter because Amazon is making a billion dollars and THEY AREN'T and driving a car somehow entitles them to a profit share from Amazon. Well guess what dimwits: if you don't like it, move on, get a real second job.