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Amazon Employee Explains the Poor Working Conditions of An Amazon Warehouse
Earlier this week, James Bloodworth, a former UK Amazon employee that worked undercover in the "fulfillment center" for six-months, released a book detailing the mistreatment of warehouse employees at the commerce company. He described the work culture as a prison after discovering that Amazon warehouse staff were peeing in bottles to avoid taking too many breaks. Since the report first broke, many Amazon employees have come out to share their thoughts on the working conditions, including one Reddit user who claims that "the post is pretty spot on": They don't monitor bathroom breaks, but [your] individual rate (or production goal) [doesn't] account for bathroom breaks, or... let's say there is a problem like you need [two] of something and there's only one left, well you have to put on your "andon"... wait for someone to come "fix" for you, all the while your rate is dropping. The [two] most common reasons [people] get fired are not hitting rate, and attendance. They don't really try to help you hit rate, they just fire and replace.
My first week there [two] [people] collapsed from dehydration. It's so [commonplace] to see someone collapse that nobody is even shocked anymore. You'll just hear a manager complain that he has to do some report now, while a couple of new [people] try to help the guy (veterans won't risk helping [because] it drips rate). No sitting allowed, and there's nowhere to sit anywhere except the break rooms. Before the robots (they call them kivas) pickers would regularly walk 10-15 miles a day, now it's just stand for 10-12 hours a day. [People] complain about the heat all the time but we just get told 80 degrees (Fahrenheit obviously) is a safe working temp. [Sometimes] they will pull out a thermometer, but even when it hits 85 they just say it's fine. There's been deaths, at least one in my building... Amazon likes to keep it all hush hush. Heard about others, you can find the stories if you search for it, but Amazon does a good job burying it... Amazon has denied the allegations, saying: "Amazon ensures all of its associates have easy access to toilet facilities which are just a short walk from where they are working. Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace for thousands of people across the UK with competitive pay and benefits from day one. We have not been provided with confirmation that the people who completed the survey worked at Amazon and we don't recognize these allegations as an accurate portrayal of activities in our buildings."
My first week there [two] [people] collapsed from dehydration. It's so [commonplace] to see someone collapse that nobody is even shocked anymore. You'll just hear a manager complain that he has to do some report now, while a couple of new [people] try to help the guy (veterans won't risk helping [because] it drips rate). No sitting allowed, and there's nowhere to sit anywhere except the break rooms. Before the robots (they call them kivas) pickers would regularly walk 10-15 miles a day, now it's just stand for 10-12 hours a day. [People] complain about the heat all the time but we just get told 80 degrees (Fahrenheit obviously) is a safe working temp. [Sometimes] they will pull out a thermometer, but even when it hits 85 they just say it's fine. There's been deaths, at least one in my building... Amazon likes to keep it all hush hush. Heard about others, you can find the stories if you search for it, but Amazon does a good job burying it... Amazon has denied the allegations, saying: "Amazon ensures all of its associates have easy access to toilet facilities which are just a short walk from where they are working. Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace for thousands of people across the UK with competitive pay and benefits from day one. We have not been provided with confirmation that the people who completed the survey worked at Amazon and we don't recognize these allegations as an accurate portrayal of activities in our buildings."
Sounds nearly identical to the working conditions of being a 'picker and packer' at toysmart.com. The only way to meet their quotas was to F-over everyone else / leave a mess / steal boxes from the people next to you so you wouldn't have to walk to the restocking station.
Walmart was/still is like that. Unionize? They'll close the whole store and rebuild it across town!
That is not why union votes fail at Walmart. If a Walmart store unionized, the workers would be better paid and have better working conditions, but they would also be DIFFERENT PEOPLE. For $15 per hour, Walmart could hire a different class of workers from what they get now for $10 per hour. My local Walmart has elderly employees, an employee in a wheelchair, and two workers that appear to be siblings with Down's Syndrome. Walmart has created productive employment for these people by scraping the bottom of the workforce barrel. Higher wages will push these people out. By voting against the union, they are not as dumb as you think they are.
Yeah, to a sweat shop in India. Oh well, without sufficient resistance, don't expect any improvement. People have to stand up and defend themselves,
Do that and a robot takes over.
I got fired last year which is embarrassing for an employee who is not entry level. Why? My metrics on cases per day for a successful software company were not high enough. I busted my butt off and did fine in the final month. But during the first 2 to 3 months I was slower as I got used to the products I was working with. I got 1 1 star rating out of 320 customers. It was not even my fault. It was her system. Yet that was enough to tank me and 5 other people on our team when a new manager came in and wanted to show how cool he was by firing the lower metric folks.
It happens and welcome to the 21st century. I deserved to be fired and employed for 5 months later. I was .6 cases per day to low and even if we were not call center employees the customer like high productivity.
You can't defend yourself if the customer wants this. The customer will go to a competitor instead and the bosses job is to keep his at all costs so the burden is on you. That is just the way it is. If no one can do that then a computer program or robot should be doing it to make the customer happy.
http://saveie6.com/
This is the UK it’s talking about, not a third world country. Not only are a lot of companies in Europe required to give paid time off for various reasons, there is a lot more time off to begin with. Also, if you think the US has a lot of regulatory overhead, workers can join a union that isn’t tied to a job, doesn’t cost dues and actually has political power. I worked in IT and I had a union.
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If you're working at a job like that, do you think you'll be *able* to look for another job after work?
I worked at a place much less worse (I don't want to say better) than that during a summer vacation during college, and after a shift I wasn't up for much of anything. I sure couldn't have looked for another job. If you haven't done a job like that, you have no idea how draining it can be.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Unions can be more then about the pay. There is also working conditions, things like a break every 2 hours and not spending 12 hours standing on your feet, something that'll fuck you in the long run. The local grocery store here only lets their cashiers stand at the till for 4 hours before having them do something else that involves movement, but then they're interested in stopping unionization by treating the workers well, and it's working.
Businesses can be insanely cheap. One of the longest strikes, for health reasons, in Canada involved an Asbestos plant. Workers went on strike with some simple demands, 2 lockers, one for their street clothes, one for their work clothes, showers to wash the asbestos off after work, car wash for the same reason, and a clean lunch room. Sounds pretty reasonable but the company didn't think so.
http://www.cbc.ca/archives/ent...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
When you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
and everybody knows
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How many people from the original Amazon Elexa team still work there? NONE. Seriously every single scientist, engineer, and expert quit as soon as the contract was up with the Amazon echo. The current team probably was flown in from India on the cheap.
They treat everyone but board members like shit. I was going to apply as a senior desktop and jr system engineer and the recruiter told me $35K a year as a contractor ... I hung up the phone. Sorry, employers have shown me not trust them if they promise you the world and will give you promotions or job security.
They simple do not care and will simply fire and replace until they find someone willing to work below value.
http://saveie6.com/
I know several people that work or have worked at Amazon in tech and it's almost as bad with management and incompetence. A Friend of mine who's working as a contractor describes what he's running into with the Echo team and the incompetence he's running into there. I also have a close relative who spent quite a long time there. Managers are basically at each other's throats and the politics are insane from what everyone tells me. My friend who's a contractor there working on the Echo keeps telling me horror stories about the incompetence he runs into daily from lead developers. Another friend of mine who left told me that most of the competent people leave.
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It is worth asking those questions
Absolutely. Say a warehouse worker gets paid above national average salary, but working conditions are outright hellish. Is this acceptable? What about paying a starvation wage but providing great on-the-job benefits and working conditions?
Morally, I would say both are not acceptable. There is no moral reason Amazon couldn't pay less and then introduce mandatory 5 minute bathroom/rest breaks every 2 hours. I suspect the reason Amazon doesn't do this is because it reduces their profits by marginally reducing per hour productivity. So in my mind Amazon is at least amoral.