Do you enjoy buying stuff on the internet from online retail giants like Amazon? Who doesn’t, right? More often than not, it’s fast, cheap and hella convenient. What’s not to love?
Well, according to the Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, workers at Amazon’s Lehigh Valley warehouse are treated like you’d expect labor to be treated in places like China, forced to work long hours in extreme heat for wages barely above the legal minimum. Things were so bad, in fact, that Amazon had ambulances stationed on 24 hour standby outside the warehouse because the employees there, including pregnant women, were dropping frequently like proverbial flies when, fearing theft, they refused to open warehouse doors during a brutal heat wave. Instead, Amazon provided employees with free popsicles and bandanas to cool them off. And to think that people have been boycotting Walmart for years because of the way they treat employees! Working for Walmart sound like working at Yahoo in the mid-90s compared to working at an Amazon warehouse.
Reports the Morning Call:
Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it’s like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get.
Only one of the employees interviewed described it as a good place to work.
Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.
During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn’t quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.
Holy Jesus what a hellhole! And the sad thing is, in this economy, people are kind of forced to take these warehouse jobs — which are advertised as taking place in a “fun, fast-paced” environment — to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. Even more appalling, Amazon hires most of these people through a temp agency, so they can then wash their hands of some of the responsibility.
But wait it get’s better…
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I recently worked as a non-union temp at the post office in a warehouse. Here’s what I saw.
-people talking on the phone around heavy machinery. Even fork lift drivers using bluetooh.
-sleeping on the job.
-20 minute breaks can last up to 40 minutes.
-workers using their seniority to literally stand around and watch others work.
-work was done by 4:15. sit around and do nothing until 5pm.
-people sneaking out for smoke breaks in full view of management.
-2 men fired for fist fighting. re-hired a month later.
-drunks.
-Management was powerless because the union would always back the worker in every situation stated above.
well the best way to deal with this problem? dont live in allentown
It doesn’t matter where you go. The company is messed up. My husband started at an Amazon warehouse in Tennessee. It’s the same here. There is also a sort of cult mentality when it comes to the company. Management tends to get irate if employees leave for break two minutes early, claiming they are stealing from the company by doing so, yet they go out of their way to avoid paying Holiday pay, altering work hours and working them just shy of the amount needed for Holiday pay. They have just informed my husband they are doing away with the learning curve they originally told him he’d have. They expect workers to know what to do without proper training and won’t address problems brought to them by employees, taking the “just figure it out and do better” approach. They ask for safety tips, and when someone offers an original, non-regurgitated tip, they are made fun of in front of everyone! If you are thinking of getting a job at Amazon, go ahead and put your head in a wood chipper. Save yourself the misery.
I work as a picker and a packer at an Amazon warehouse in Scotland in the UK and i have to say the way they treat their employee’s is an absolute joke. We are given a set hourly target to meet, which many if not most people struggle to meet. The only way to meet targets is to go very fast, which often contradicts Amazons safety policies and can result in workers injuring themselves and others by pushing trollies too fast or walking out in front of forklifts without realizing because you’re too busy trying to meet targets and not paying attention. Every hour or so if you’re packing (taking items that have been picked by a “picker”, building up a cardboard box and then putting the item in the box and sending it down a conveyer, you have a Team Lead come up and ask why you are behind target and urge you to speed up. Employees houry “scores” are put up on the wall so everyone call see. This is basically to encourage you to compete and try beat the others scores. Its all about competitiveness and not team work.
However by speeding up you are more likely to make mistakes (called “Errors” at Amazon). Too many errors and you can get fired. So by speeding up to meet targets you make errors, which can cost your job, but if you go too slow to avoid errors, you can get fired for not meeting targets ! Its not fair at all. Even some team leads acknowledge (though not in front of Area Managers) that targets are ridiculous. Speaking as someone who mostly picks, (though i occasionally pack) we only get one half hour break for an 8 hour shift that often involves us speed walking in blistering heat in order to scan items and take them to a packer to pack them.
In short, the pressure to meet targets is behind the majority of injuries and errors in Amazon warehouses. If management lowered their outrageous targets and gave us less pressure, there would be fewer work related injuries, less items going to problem solve, and less stressed out workers leading to a far more productive work environment !