16, March 2021 Amazon slave workers
Amazon delivery drivers are forced to work 14-hour days with no bathroom
breaks. Their deliveries are carefully
monitored by the home office to ensure no delays occur, not even for the call of nature. Many workers on
the shop floor have used diapers to avoid bathroom breaks. Fourteen-hour
shifts are common because delivery service providers wouldn’t allow drivers to
return any packages from their routes and the pressure to meet delivery rates forced
divers to use plastic bottles to urinate.
Any time a van is
off the scheduled route or stops for longer than three minutes, an alert is
sent to the delivery service provider. Amazon encourages the delivery service
owners to cut down on “unscheduled” stops. Drivers would then receive call from
the dispatcher which added valuable time to their scheduled deliveries. To
avoid such confrontations, drivers would skip “pit stops” and use plastic
bottles rendering package deliveries very unhygienic.
Amazon uses
contractors for delivery services, making it exceedingly difficult for workers
to protect their interests by establishing a union. Delivery service providers have a financial
incentive for pushing their hapless drivers to the brink because they are paid
bonuses on metrics such as targeted routes completion percentages.
Amazon has
publicly opposed unionization and recently launched a vigorous anti-union
campaign of a union election vote at a
warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Mass text ads were sent to workers encouraging
them to vote against the union.
Amazon is effectively
abdicating its responsibility by creating a firewall, loaning money to
subcontractors to gain access to their vans to offload corporate responsibility
of its workers.
Amazon drivers
are paid $15 an hour compared to UPS drivers, who are represented by the
powerful Teamsters, and are paid a base wage of $21 per hours rising to $40 or
more.
Drivers for
Amazon contractors have also complained of “big brother surveillance” cameras
watching their activities inside their vans and a tracking app, Mentor, to
monitor bathroom breaks. This is a particular hardship for female drivers who
desperately look for a grocery store to take bathroom breaks which averages 10
minutes. Most complained of this AI technology invading their privacy. Drivers
for Amazon delivery service providers also face fear of retaliation for trying
to organize in their workplaces.
In the meantime
CEO Jeff Bezos make more in 12 seconds than his lowest paid workers makes
annually.
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