Amazon has issued a rare public apology – but not to its workers, and without a true admission of guilt.
A week ago, the company publicly rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) was caught lying that his workers never felt the need to unload water bottles (which, in fact, is a well-documented issue at Amazon as it robotically tracks and fires its workers).
Now, late Friday evening before Easter week, when a few (hat help) Geekwire) Paying attention, the company is apologizing to Poken – and someone else. Amazon also apologizes for not just being “accurate” – not really for creating and contributing to situations where workers look in bottles.
In fact, Amazon is in a very unfortunate position to suggest a whole pay bottle thing, while delivery drivers of some companies were also caught looking at the bottles, as well as embedding a handful of random comments. On Twitter which happens to support Amazon’s views. You can almost hear Jeff Bezos saying, “Why don’t these people blame UPS and FedEx? Let’s think more about them instead.”
The Blog Post also insists that this is just an issue for delivery drivers, not Amazon’s warehouse workers – but 2018 revealed to a hidden reporter that Amazon warehouse workers were also forced to take a break in the bathroom, and a worker who spoke to reporters Was Just last week The suggested bathroom break is still an issue in 2021. “You’re sitting there and you have to take a pace, but you shouldn’t end up working,” she said. Motherboard.
Amazon is also currently facing lawsuits over a missed lunch break. And most importantly, all of this is happening in the shadow of the Amazon Union vote in the Bessemer of Alasma, which could help shape the future of labor in the United States, let alone on Amazon.
Amazon’s apology to Pokનmon is a kind of memo that is worth noting, line-by-line, partly because one of its lines is really good – “regardless of the fact that this industry is pervasive, we want to address it. We don’t know how yet, but we will find solutions “- but because it’s 1am here and it turns out EdgeThis blockquote tool does not allow me to embed tweets, I will give you the primary adventure for now:
Last week on Wednesday, @amazonnews Twitter account Tweeted the following Back to Rep. Mark Poken:
This was our own goal, we are unhappy with that, and we apologize to Representative Poken.
First, the tweet was wrong. It does not contemplate our large driver population and instead focuses incorrectly on our fulfillment centers. A typical Amazon fulfillment center has dozens of restrooms, and employees can move away from their workstations at any time. If the experience of any employee at a fulfillment center is different, we encourage them to talk to their manager and we will work to fix it.
Second, our process was flawed. This tweet did not receive proper verification. We need to always keep ourselves in a very high accuracy bar, and that is especially so when we criticize the comments of others.
Third, we know that drivers can and do find it difficult to find leisure due to traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has happened especially during covid when many public bedrooms have been closed.
This is a long-running, industry-wide issue and is not exclusive to Amazon. We’ve included some links below that discuss this topic.
Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we want to address it. We don’t know how yet, but we will find solutions.
We will continue to speak out when misrepresented, but we will always work hard to be accurate.
We apologize to Representative Poken.
You can read the full version here. When you’re done, check it out MotherboardInterview with six Female Amazon delivery drivers, for whom the penny situation is obviously much worse.
