Amazon - massive human exploitation

[bLu3 de 3n3rgy]

Just watching Panorama which is revealing the exploitation of Amazon.com workers. The program shows us undercover, how slave driven their system is.

Their workers are walking up to 11 plus miles a day / night over 10 hrs shifts 4 times a week. But not only that, they have to carry these scanners which physically count down a target time as they walk, which they have to reach between picking orders up around the warehouse. The scanner records the scores like a video game and sends them to a record file that is kept on every worker. For the workers that don't reach the count down targets constantly enough, they are then disciplined.

The disciplinary procedure even punishes workers for feeling unwell or for having slow days or slow targets because of physical reasons. If a worker takes ill and has to go home they get punished, if a worker has to call in sick they get punished. The system is a 3 points and you are sacked system. For every moment a worker becomes unwell during the shift and can't walk no more and has to go home, that is half a point.

Amazon argued and rebutted every single point put to them by the opinions and law of experts. How can they get away with this ? As a barrister pointed out it is illegal to make people work physically or walk a certain distance over time. I think the limit is something like 6 miles aday and for no longer than 8hrs at a time.

These workers are doing this multiple times per week, week in week out and one Dr said that the combination of pressure ( the scanners recording your efforts every second of the day with targets to beat every 33 seconds on loop over 10 hrs ) with a job that offers little agency is a major cause of mental illness / breakdown and physical illness. And yet amazon punish people for showing physical weakness. They are disgusting treating people like robots and I have to question the morals of the supervisors and mangers that are happy to sit there and call people up on their scanner scores like it is some sort of matrix game.

When you compare to other groups who physically train day in day like pro athletes, or military personnel, even they know it is a fact of life that the human body has low ebbs and slow / off days as a natural course of our cycles. The night shift for example is completely brutal on the human body.

Is amazon getting away with breaking the law and humans rights because of its status of being a .com or something else. After watching this documentary exposing them i don't want to ever buy anything from them directly again, but rather use the self employed market place traders instead.

Also if anyone has ever worked for them, it would be interesting to hear your views for the thread.

Edited November 25, 2013 by bLu3 de 3n3rgy

[freetoroam]

What country is it ?

[bLu3 de 3n3rgy]

Panorama was filming this about Amazon UK.

[Dark_Grey]

Are they being paid a fair and competitive wage? If yes, then the discussion is over. As long as Amazon is treating it's working fairly according to every letter of the law, they aren't doing anything wrong. Some jobs are just tougher than others. I worked in a warehouse for a while and most of the systems Amazon are using don't seem that dissimilar.

[George Ford]

This is shocking, I have used Amazon several times in the past but am happy to boycott them until they make changes to fix the problems. Back to E-bay I guess.

[bLu3 de 3n3rgy]

Are they being paid a fair and competitive wage? If yes, then the discussion is over. As long as Amazon is treating it's working fairly according to every letter of the law, they aren't doing anything wrong. Some jobs are just tougher than others. I worked in a warehouse for a while and most of the systems Amazon are using don't seem that dissimilar.

£6 something an hour for a day shift and £8 something an hour for night shift. The people they interviewed and working for panorama undercover had warehouse experience and said they had never come across anything like this until Amazon. Their undercover guy was a 23 year old who was really into fitness ( runs up and down mountains, endurance training etc ) he ended up quitting the job as soon as he could and even with his fitness level he occurred disciplinary points.

Edited November 25, 2013 by bLu3 de 3n3rgy

[Still Waters]

There's a BBC news report about this. I was looking at it earlier.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...siness-25034598

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25091315

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

IIRC they get around some of the labour laws by saying they're a foreign firm - no matter what country they're in.

[Dark_Grey]

£6 something an hour for a day shift and £8 something an hour for night shift. The people they interviewed and working for panorama undercover had warehouse experience and said they had never come across anything like this until Amazon. Their undercover guy was a 23 year old who was really into fitness ( runs up and down mountains, endurance training etc ) he ended up quitting the job as soon as he could and even with his fitness level he occurred disciplinary points.

Oh wow...that's serious. I just re-read the article

[kannin]

disgusting

[freetoroam]

It really does not matter what country it is in, human exploitation is still wrong anywhere, but for it to be happening in a country where it is illegal is even worse.

The wages are legal, but the hours are not...if they are not getting a break?

I am sure if they digged into some of the foreign run take aways, they will find worse.

It has to be made clear, we do not do this in this country, if caught, the owners should be returned to their own countries were the laws are lax and if the owners are English, then the company should be closed and the owners sent to prison.

We are just being taken back to the middle ages with some of these companies!

[White Crane Feather]

It's a shame archaic forms of control do not promote efficiency. People are not computers and they cannot be managed as such. Ultimately it will hurt their bottom line. All corporations worth their sslt know that investing in their people and the moral of the employees is extremely important.

[freetoroam]

All corporations worth their sslt know that investing in their people and the moral of the employees is extremely important.

We would like to think so, but it does not work this way. PROFITS is what matters, and if they can not make it out from exploiting the staff, they will make thier profits by exploiting the customer.

Edited November 26, 2013 by freetoroam

[bLu3 de 3n3rgy]

It's a shame archaic forms of control do not promote efficiency. People are not computers and they cannot be managed as such. Ultimately it will hurt their bottom line. All corporations worth their sslt know that investing in their people and the moral of the employees is extremely important.

I think that is why it is shocking. Who are these circus masters bringing in these kind of robot methods to run their bottom line ? This is what i hate about cheapness overall- it does not feel good and it does not look good to buy goods from a company knowing how cheap they are with their staff and customer. It's why i hate to fly with RyanAir, and won't again. Same principles. Everything is focused on being so cheap (when what your paying is not cheap after the tax charges and baggage allowance charges are added) that the whole experience feels nasty. The Air staff stand in these planes desperate to sell anything they can at any opportunity, scratch cards, over priced drinks and snacks. They stand there like embarrassed sales people or con artists. As an empath, you can feel how miserable everyone is crammed into a plane trying to squeeze every cm into seats. The staff are miserable and only a little research shows how badly they are treated, even having to pay for the uniforms they stand in and there maintenance. Anyone who has ever flown on one of those flights will know exactly what i mean.

Cheapness = stress and humiliation. Either the company makes its worker force feel these things or its customers or both. The humiliation process of RA begins the moment the customer gets to the airport and has to go through the process of having their carry on luggage measured in a special size box and you see people desperately layering up all their clothes under their coats lol.

I would rather be on a plane or in a service where the staff feel happy and proud to be standing in the companies uniform and transfer that happiness to the customer and make the customer feel happy to be giving them business and keeping them in business.

The other slant to the program was covering the struggles of a small independent warehouse selling books who was facing closure because they couldn't compete with amazon. They were not lacking business, they just couldn't compete with amazons super low prices. Again the small independent warehouse isn't specifically over charging or being greedy, it's the cheapness factor again from amazon causing others to be priced out of business to the point only amazon can survive. That is why i hate cheapness it doesn't breed wealth or happiness in anyone at all, it is a neg damaging thing.

Well we know what the cost is for amazons cheapness now.

[Orcseeker]

This happens over everything. The fact of getting something for cheaper = good. But in the long run consequences of those cost cutting methods will catch up to everyone. And they'll be wishing they helped out the honest local store.

[TSS]

I worked for several distribution companies in my younger days (quick and easy money) - Wincanton, Hayes, ADL...(and probably a few others)...we worked 12hr shifts, alternating between +3 to -25 (deep freeze). The whole method was designed around chasing the clock, you had set amounts to order pick in set times, and had to reach a set figure before the end of the shift, if you didn't then you wasn't there long. I was in my late teens/early twenties at the time so had no problem with it (I treated it as a work-out actually)...but there were quite a few middle aged men there who really struggled, the women struggled too because it was physically demanding (in terms of the weights you lifted)....I did feel sorry for those who were stuck there and had little chance of much better.

The only upside was the wage - I earnt very good money and loads of over-time too....when the minimum wage was introduced they just started emplying people at the lowest wage they could, which in turn meant a very high turn-over of staff....standards dropped, and then dropped again, and again....Hayes lost their contracts, ADL went under, and Wincanton bought their premises up and carried on as normal..