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“You really don’t believe in this story of peeing in bottles, do you? If that were true, no one would work for us. ” March 25 was with this phrase written not Twitter (in response to criticism from Mark Pocan, a US congressman) that Amazon was caught up in a barrage of complaints. On Friday night, in a statement, the company acknowledged the mistake and apologized to the politician: “The tweet was incorrect. We do not consider our large number of drivers. “
Amazon denied workers urinated into bottles and received evidence to the contrary
We know that drivers can and do have a hard time finding restrooms due to traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this was especially the case during Covid, when many public restrooms closed, ”says Amazon.
Amazon acknowledges that delivery routes are narrowed to the point that they are prevented from going to the bathroom to fulfill everything that is asked of them. However, according to the technology giant founded by Jeff Bezos, its distribution centers have all the necessary conditions. “A typical Amazon distribution center has dozens of restrooms and employees can leave their workstations at any time. If any employee at a distribution center has a different experience, we encourage them to speak with their manager and we will work to correct it, ”he promises.
[Abaixo, o tweet de Pocan que iniciou a polémica, no qual o político alega que pagar 15 dólares à hora não é válido quando se tem trabalhadores a urinar em garrafas, e a resposta polémica da Amazon]
Paying workers $ 15 an hour doesn’t make it a “progressive workplace” when a union breaks and makes workers pee in water bottles. https://t.co/CnFTtTKA9q
– Representative Mark Pocan (@repmarkpocan) March 25, 2021
Even assuming that the wrong answer was answered by the congressman – “The tweet did not receive due scrutiny”, he defended himself – the company assures that this problem is broader: “This is an old problem that covers the entire sector and is not specific from Amazon ”. Because of this, the online shopping platform and cloud services say they will “look for solutions” to solve this problem.
Although Amazon says that the problem of going to the bathroom does not occur in distribution centers, there have been several reports from workers who claim that this may not be true. This type of situation has been reported for several years, as in 2018, in a company warehouse in the United Kingdom. This story was later published in The Guardian journalist James Bloodworth’s book: “Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain.” [em português, “Contratado: Seis meses infiltrado na Grã-Bretanha de baixos salários”].
This Amazon tweet comes at a time when workers at one of Amazon’s hubs in Alabama, USA, are trying to create a union to protect them. For several years, the company has tried to prevent distribution center workers in the US from organizing into unions. However, these votes in Alabama, to be announced next week, could change the way Amazon treats its employees, as The Verge explains.
Workers who want a union to do it because they are saturated with what they say are abusive practices by the company, such as controlling every task by the second, not allowing moments of rest. If they can create a union in Alabama, more Amazon factories can start to do the same. This will force the company to have to negotiate differently with its employees.
In the last year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the company registered an unprecedented increase in business since the beginning of the pandemic, due to restrictions and social distancing, which forced the closure of physical stores and eliminated much of the competition of the digital ones. platform. In the United States alone, Amazon has added 175,000 new workers since the pandemic began.
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