‘They Treat Us Worse Than Animals’: Working Without Water at Amazon
‘They Treat Us Worse Than Animals’: Working Without Water at Amazon
Exclusive: Amazon bosses forced staff at the company's Bristol warehouse to work without access to drinking water and toilets — the latest example of the company's hyper-exploitative employment practices.
Okay I’m gonna get absolutely blasted for this, but here it goes.
Water went out in the warehouse at 3:45am, the last workers on that shift went home at 5:00am it sounds like. And the next shift which was to start at 7am was called and told not to come in because there was a water issue.
They were called back into work when the issue was fixed.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this at all according to the facts as stated in the article.
They were without water for about an hour before they were scheduled to go home. It would take about that long for management to even recognize the issue, contact the city and get a timeline for repair. In the meantime, just keep working until they figure out how long it’ll take to fix, and when it is clear that it’ll take awhile, call the next shift and tell them they will reopen when the water is fixed.
Sounds absolutely reasonable to me.
But I know everyone loves shitting on amazon, so this post is gonna get murdered
I will cheerfully shit on Amazon every day, which is why shit articles like this piss me off. Amazon does plenty of real harm, but articles like this give this make people think "well, if this is their workplace mistreatment, then it's not that bad."
It is that bad, but this isn't an example of that. This could happen anywhere, to anyone, even the most ethical company/co-op/whatever on the planet. They handled it well. So let's go after them for actual shit instead.
You're not wrong, I work for the government and if our utility services shut off for more than an hour I think we go home. People are saying that time without water would suck but I mean they are pissing in bottles and shitting in buckets. Does that make it right, no. But unless you have a medical emergency an hour fifteen is not going without water.
Well yeah they are pissing in bottles, but that's every day.
Yes but amazon has shown a history of not giving a shit about its workers
See, the real trick amazon does is that no one is ever without a drink.
because if the water goes out, the workers can just pick up the piss bottles from the previous shift who had to piss in the aisle since they arent allowed to go to the bathroom.
Just imagine how many pissy fingerprints and straight piss might be on those packages your getting, having plenty of time to dry between boxing and delivery.
The issue continued during the day shift. ‘They emailed dayshift workers at 7 AM to not come to work when the starting time is 7:45 AM, so many were already on site or on their way to work,’ explains Hannah.
Many workers travel to the Bristol site from the Newport area, roughly an hour and a half away. GMB union organiser Marie McDonald says workers were told to go home and advised that they would be paid for the day. But at about half past twelve, they received a message from the site saying that the water was back on, and they were expected to be on-site by one o’clock. ‘You’ve got to bear in mind that a lot of our members travel great distances to get to work. The bus stop in Newport is not centrally located. They have to walk for half an hour, so many couldn’t get on the bus in time to get back to Bristol,’ she tells Tribune.
One of our members, who couldn’t physically get to the site, was told they would have to take annual leave if they couldn’t get to the site. She doesn’t have any annual leave, so she’s being penalised for an issue completely out of her control. As far as I’m concerned, Amazon is putting productivity over staff safety.’
That sounds “absolutely reasonable”to you? Really? I hope I never work for someone with standards like that.
The article says the water went out at 3:00, not 3:45. The shift ends at 4:45, again from this article. That's nearly 2 hours without drinking water or toilet facilities. That's a fairly long time.
Your also wrong about the next shift and the notification. Again, in this article....
The issue continued during the day shift. ‘They emailed dayshift workers at 7 AM to not come to work when the starting time is 7:45 AM, so many were already on site or on their way to work,’ explains Hannah.
They sent an email, not a phone call, 45 minutes before the shift started. I'd be surprised if any of the employees checked their email at the last minute before leaving for work. It goes on to say that many employees come from a town an hour away. The email was sent while many employees were already on their 1-1.5 hour commute. The. They told them just go home.
Then, at 12:30, they messaged the employees that the water was on and they needed to be back at work in half an hour or they would not be paid for it.
Your description of events does not at all match what the article describes. Do you really think Amazon's behavior is acceptable ad I and the article describe it?
I don't buy on Amazon anymore. Not only to they treat their employees like crap, but also it's harder and harder to find quality stuff on their platform. Fake reviews are a huge problem.
Completely agree. Don’t use them for numerous reasons now, one (of many) being the amount of cheap junk cluttering up the search results with fake reviews.
Is there an actual alternative general online store that treats its employees well and has good prices on decent products? I'm all for supporting a different online retailer over Amazon.
Similarly, I've been trying to purchase less on Amazon, but the brick and mortar stores around me are also giants (namely Walmart). I haven't been doing a good job of it, but I feel like part of the process of getting away from Amazon is also accepting some inconvenience and seeking things out from local shops.
Things though like detergent, toilet paper, etc, I really don't know who sells them other than big box stores.
Depends where you're from but I don't know any who's global like Amazon is.
While there's definitely a lot of crap on there I've gotten pretty good at picking out stuff that's good for the price. I got this magnetic phone case and wallet combo and was actually baffled it was comparable to something I'd buy at say Macy's or something. Nothing fancy but well made and cheap. And it didn't explode. But I see most people have trouble with it including my SO. He will buy stuff sometimes and it's just trash. The Amazon brand stuff though is surprisingly good and we had swarn not to buy anything that said Amazon on it lol. Oh well.
I bet everyone shitting on amazon in the comments has a amazon package on thier doorstep right now lol.
I don't see how one invalidates the other. Amazon's predatory practices have killed off the competition and created a sizable price gap. Not everyone has the luxury of voting with their money.
I haven't noticed their prices being lower in most cases. Check eBay. It's usually about 10% cheaper.
They haven't killed competition. There are hundreds of other online places to buy stuff for most items, too.
I agree with the dude about the Apple products. I think the third and fourth panels are straw man arguments.
You can choose to dislike Apple's practices. However, if you know about their labor issues yet still buy their products, then their suffering is not important enough. You might have your reasons to get an iPhone, but no reason is going to ever nullify that you willingly understood the chain of responsibility, and elected to be a contributor to the problem.
This matters in the aspect of Apple devices because there are dozens of very reasonable hardware vendors and hundreds of phones to choose from, yet you purchased the one that you know has poor practices. It's like living in a rural area, and buying eggs from the guy that kicks their chickens. Then complaining about it while making dinner with them.
The seat belt is a straw man argument here because car manufacturers did not cause labor problems by not having a seat belt. It was simply because the safety of seat belts were not realized, yet. This has nothing to do with labor at all, and is a silly argument.
By pretending that old cars are like Apple phones, and claiming that the argument against old cars is silly, then complaining about Apple must be silly. However, complaining about Apple is valid, and has nothing to do with old cars. This is a textbook straw man fallacy.
Then, the strip goes to volume 11 with the straw man arguments on the fourth pane by comparing improving society with Apple's unfair labor. It assumes that you fell for the straw man fallacy about old cars, which primes you for this pane. With the rest of the strip, it implies that if you live in a society (which we all do), then you cannot complain about Apple's labor issues. Additionally, the quip about being "very intelligent" is sarcasm, and it's an ad hominem attack against the critical thinker: you.
You absolutely can complain about Apple's labor issues, and you can choose to not participate in it by funding their labor. Additionally, you can still be somewhat concerned about the labor issues, but not be concerned enough to buy from other vendors. This is arguably hypocritical, but pretending that you cannot do both or have other opinions presents another fallacy: the false dichotomy fallacy.
In other words, this comic sucks. If you fell for it, then you're simply human, and that's okay, but please be aware that these arguments are the cornerstones of propaganda. They're easy to fall for if you're not looking for them, and it will make you believe in things that you wouldn't ordinarily believe.
My household has not bought anything from them since before the pandemic. Unfortunately, this means relying on Walmart, which isn't much better, but at least they get toilet breaks.
Yeah because you can totally reasonably not participate in capitalism while living in a capitalist country who happens to be arguably the strongest super power in the world.
Take your pompous, self righteous ass the fuck out of here so the adults can work on solutions with each other through understanding and planning.
Curious
This is normal in the United States and has been for a long time. When i was a homeless LGBT teenager trying to survive, i went to a temp agency trying to make a living some other way than SW. They sent me to this warehouse where a bunch of felons and ESL people were working in some of the most inhumane conditions i had ever seen before. 12 hour days in a 110 degree warehouse working with toxic industrial chemicals that we had no information on, with a bare minimum of PPE, intense physical labor moving large stacks of equipment, and one break at the 6 hour mark to drink water. Most of the people there had been there a while. They just had this quiet resignation and determination to survive.
I didn't even last a single day. I started to feel heat stroke coming on around the 8 hour mark. Shivering, no more sweat, everything started to feel distant and confusing. I tried to go get water and they wouldn't let me, so i threw all my equipment on the ground and stumbled outside to find water, and never went back. I'm white, trans, and feminine enough to survive other ways, but most of those people didn't have any other options.
Fuck this monstrous place. I've been radicalized ever since seeing things like that.
one of the most fucked things about america is that it seems like whenever you have a shitty work environment, it's actually fine because
a) it builds character. complaining is weakness.
b) the company has to make a profit
like zero cognizance of human rights or quality of life. just, it is what it is, deal with it or you're a sNoWFlAkE.
from grade school to now peers have looked at me weird for simply complaining when something is shitty, which i've never understood. like oh we can't use headphones while we work 8 hrs washing dishes? you just take that? ok i'm going to stare at a wall because a guy said so? wtf?
That's the thing that has always driven me crazy about our way of speaking about these things. Politicians say "we created x jobs" like it's something to optimize for. People fear automation because it takes away their livelihoods. But, automating work and eliminating jobs should make people's lives... better? Why doesn't it actually? Where did the wires get crossed?
Why did we incentivize making humans suffer, at a grand societal level? Are we insane?
It might be somewhat normal in the US, but it's frightening to see in the UK, a country that supposedly actually has employee rights.
There are, but apparently Amazon chose to ignore them because they see their employees as subhuman.
Hopefully this particular warehouse gets its arse handed to it but I very much doubt it will unfortunately.
Animals can form unions
Unfortunately not most of them
Scamazon.
I've been avoiding Amazon since 2010. No regrets. They crave your time, money, and attention, and they deserve none of those. (Same with Meta.)
It's easy to avoid giving them your money directly, but preventing your money from trickling up to Bezos via websites that use AWS is a hell of a lot more difficult!
I stopped using Amazon. It used to fill the niche of "I need this particular thing how" but honestly, 2 day shopping has been a lie for a while. If I need something that bad I can find a store with it. If I need something specific I can order manufacturer direct.
