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Amazon Workers Facing Firing Can Appeal To a Jury of Their Co-Workers (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Jane was working in Amazon's Seattle headquarters when she was asked to a meeting with her manager and a human resources representative. They gave her a document outlining concerns about her work performance and spelled out three choices. She could quit and receive severance pay, spend the next several weeks trying to keep her job by meeting certain performance goals, or square off with her manager in a videoconference version of the Thunderdome, pleading her case with a panel of co-workers while her boss argued against her. Jane, who asked that her real name not be used to discuss a personal matter, chose the last one.
Amazon is borrowing a page from union grievance processes that don't apply to most corporate employees. But only about 30 percent of those who appeal their manager's criticisms prevail, meaning they can keep their jobs or seek new ones within the company with different bosses, according to people familiar with the matter. Eighteen months after its debut, the hearing process has created resentment and raised questions about fairness, according to current and former workers as well as attorneys familiar with their situations. "It's a kangaroo court," says George Tamblyn, a Seattle employment lawyer who helped one former Amazon worker plan her appeal earlier this year. "My impression of the process is it's totally unfair." According to a person familiar with the process, the workers who fail to make their case and get their job back can still choose between severance pay or a performance-improvement plan. The program, called "Pivot," was started last year.
Here's what Amazon has to say on the matter: "Pivot is a uniquely Amazonian program that was thoughtfully designed to provide a fair and transparent process for employees who need support. When employees are placed in Pivot, they have the option of working with their manager and HR to improve with a clear plan forward, of leaving Amazon with severance, or of appealing if they feel they shouldn't be in the program. Just over a year into program, we're pleased with the support it offers our employees and we're continuing to iterate based on employee feedback and their needs."
Amazon is borrowing a page from union grievance processes that don't apply to most corporate employees. But only about 30 percent of those who appeal their manager's criticisms prevail, meaning they can keep their jobs or seek new ones within the company with different bosses, according to people familiar with the matter. Eighteen months after its debut, the hearing process has created resentment and raised questions about fairness, according to current and former workers as well as attorneys familiar with their situations. "It's a kangaroo court," says George Tamblyn, a Seattle employment lawyer who helped one former Amazon worker plan her appeal earlier this year. "My impression of the process is it's totally unfair." According to a person familiar with the process, the workers who fail to make their case and get their job back can still choose between severance pay or a performance-improvement plan. The program, called "Pivot," was started last year.
Here's what Amazon has to say on the matter: "Pivot is a uniquely Amazonian program that was thoughtfully designed to provide a fair and transparent process for employees who need support. When employees are placed in Pivot, they have the option of working with their manager and HR to improve with a clear plan forward, of leaving Amazon with severance, or of appealing if they feel they shouldn't be in the program. Just over a year into program, we're pleased with the support it offers our employees and we're continuing to iterate based on employee feedback and their needs."
Sounds like a union. If an employee is fired, they can appeal to the union to get their job back. However, I've never seen a case where the union didn't side with the employee.
I'm betting they implemented this process to avoid true unionization.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
If the jury chooses in favor of the employee, one of the jurors has to lose their job.
#DeleteChrome
Better watch that movie again. For this to truly be 'thunderdome' ...two (men) enter, one (man) leaves... her boss would have to have some skin in the game too.
Now if she got to argue her case and either she got fired, or her boss got fired and she took his place, THAT would be thunderdome!
I can't wait to see how this works out.
It's great to give an employee a chance to change and it's also great to point out a crappy manager/supervisor.
Years ago, a developer decided to go on the management track and he went and read all those airport management books. And having drunk the company Kool-Aid and all excited about climbing the corporate ladder, he worked 12 hour days and became insufferable with his "metrics".
He wrote me up. I took it to another manager and showed him for advice or just a reality check - maybe I was really at fault. After reading the formal complaint to HR, under his breath he said, "Jackass." and then, "I don't have an opening and you didn't hear this from me, leave." He was in different department - hardware - and didn't have any need for programmers.
Many times, managers are just dicks but people are too quick to blame the employee.
Its sole purpose is to convince the employee to quit voluntarily, rather than firing them. Because paying unemployment just can't be done.
You get several choices... McDonalds is hiring. We'll transfer you every 3 months to a new (far away) location. I (manager) fucked up your job, so either you pay for it or you can quit.
I can't say who because of a wonderful thing called an NDA, and being a Teamster union job did jack squat.
> According to a person familiar with the process, the workers who fail to make their case and get their job back can still choose between severance pay or a performance-improvement plan.
So if that piece of information is true, sounds to me like there's no real harm in trying the Thunderdome as you can still choose option 1 or 2. Worth a Hail Mary, you never know, it might land.
The oversight or lack thereof that's birthed such a process though is insane.
After reading the article the outcome seems to be,
How is either of these outcome going to be better for the company or the employee?
I didn't fire the guy. His fellow inmates ... I mean cow-orkers ... made that decision.
This is what Catbert uses to amuse himself.
Amazon workers facing appeal should be able to take their case to an employment board running outside the influence of the company. There are OBVIOUS conflicts of interest in allowing a "jury" of Amazon workers to judge the case.
It called "Pivot" because the employee in question is made the pivot man in a circle jerk?
The primary job of an HR department is to make sure the company doesn't get sued. They don't give a rats ass if your manager is a dick who is expecting you to complete a month's worth of work in a week, unless you start using phrases like "constructive discharge" and make sure to CC the EEOC and any state employment law enforcement agency so they know there's a record. If the HR department thinks they can get away with firing you, even if they know it's illegal, that's what they'll do.
This is why it is important to have unions who can help balance the scales. Someone that advocates for the employee, not the employer, since the EEOC, NLRB, and all the others are set up to give the outward appearance that they are on the side of the employee, but really the process is stacked in favor of the employer.
If you have a dick boss who's trying to get rid of you, there's a simple email you can send that will likely get the HR department shitting their pants and telling your boss to back off.
Send something to your boss, your boss' boss, HR, the EEOC and any state agency, and be sure to copy yourself to a non-work email address, saying how you feel that your boss is attempting to get you to constructively discharge because you're a man/woman, a particular race, over 40 years old, or at least one of the other protected classes that is at least plausible. Say that you do not appreciate the behavior and you expect it to stop immediately or you will file a formal complaint with the EEOC (and state). Usually that will buy you at least six months, since that's the cutoff point most courts use for deciding if something was retaliation. So just keep a list of grievances, and pull one out every 4-5 months. Set a reminder on your phone calendar or something so you don't forget. You should also probably use that time to look for another job, since eventually the company will probably decide to take their chances and fire you anyway.
But it's not really "Thunderdome" unless the Manager was at risk of losing their job if the jury rules in the case of the employee being sacked.
I used to work at Amazon...
Here is my performance review that basically said "Last chance before you are fired"
https://drive.google.com/open?...
Note: It is long
I served at a Pivot jury a couple of times at Amazon. It's not unfair - people are selected randomly for it and from outside of employee's manager chain of command.
In both of the cases the employee was clearly not performing well and I personally haven't seen any evidence of bias. We were not coached to be pro-firing as well.
Waaahhh!! It's unfair! It's unfair! It's unfair! The big bad mean corporation shouldn't be able to fire me because I'm not doing a good job!!! Also, where's my participation trophy?
That reads more like a memo that will end with "here is your raise".
Not much else to say there. If Amazon workers actually unionize we'll see a revolution in automation.
Often, management is relatively clueless about their own operations. They don't always know who the critical members of their team are.
A few years back, I was pushed out of a company because the chief of operations thought I was their weakest developer, and that the actual weakest dev was their rockstar. I was heavily specialized in database and backend coding, which management didn't see as important because they never got client complaints about it. Rather than seeing that as "this dev writes solid code", they saw it as "this dev is slower than Rockstar". Now, Rockstar would push code to production as soon as it compiled, only getting away with it because his main task was endless revisions on a social media network with maybe a dozen users that weren't funding the project, and he constantly relied on other devs to do anything outside his limited skillset (I wrote basically every database query for that project, despite never being assigned to it).
Had there been a "jury of my peers", I'd have been completely vindicated. But, they weren't the type to listen to their peons, let alone ask their opinion. So, out the door I went. And half the company followed in the next year.
Now, in my case, there was no higher level of management, and few people will set up a system to protect their company from their own mistakes. Amazon, however, is big enough to have several layers of management between the ground level and the board room. They can benefit from a mechanism to protect from bad frontline managers' staffing decisions. This is pretty unconventional, and I can see some potential defects in their specific implementation, but the principle seems sound.
Have the employees give their managers performance reviews, and make the poor performing ones beg for a second chance. This would be far more effective at finding good managers than what HR can do.
American workforce becoming a swamp of useless spineless drones:
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I recently (and for the first time) experienced that a colleague who was a highly valued hard worker in the eyes (and according to the peer reviews) of his colleagues was fired - seemingly just because a manager 3 levels above him disliked him, despite never having worked directly with him, even without ever having confronted him with whatever caused his antipathy. In this particular case, even the direct manager of the guy was fine with him, and did not understand why 2 levels above him a decision was made to get rid of the guy.
Had a "Jury" decided, no question the outcome would have been different.
If they let this continue, they are going down the tubes. Before long, they will unionize, and prices will go up. Shoot, they already charge over 100 bucks a year for prime.
In other news, a jury of peers in the union will decide who should be shipped off the island next.
If you fucks wouldn't put up with this shit for whatever dumb reason you think makes it worth it I would blame employers, but you know exactly what you're getting before you go to work for Amazon - if you choose to willingly sign up for that, you need to learn the lesson the hard way.
You know, the ones that colleges use to try a man who has sex or who favors a wrongthink hypothesis or is found to have a Republican relative?
If I'm reading this right, and I think I am, the part that everyone appears to be overlooking is that you can choose to receive a severance package when terminated for cause, and if instead of winning the "thunderdome debate" you lose, you still retain the option of accepting the performance package (meet these criteria in this period of time to keep your job) OR the severance package.
First, I've never heard of the average worker getting severance when fired for cause.
Second, why wouldn't you choose to have the video debate? Plead your case, even if you lose, the other two options remain on the table.
Third, this seems like yet another "if Amazon is doing it, it must be bad" articles - if a worker doesn't want to participate, take the package and go. If the worker wants to participate and loses, they can still take the package. The downside is what exactly?
The next time a coworker is fired, ask them if they'll get a severance package, then ask them if they'd like to debate the merits of their termination with their manager, without risking a severance package?
Ken
The one thing that's missing in the process is manager accountability. Managers should have these recorded as part of their performance. If they have multiple decisions going against them in the arbitration process then they're the ones hauled up for unsatisfactory performance.
Without consequences to the managers this is a feel-good process that the company can point to and show that they're willing to 'work' with employees who 'feel they're unfairly singled out'.