Subject: RE: UK Petition: Amazon mistreats workers!
From:
YorkshireYankee
Date: 16 Dec 13 - 04:44 PM
Ed - Thanks very much for your response. I do appreciate it.
I admit, I don't know if the same (electric shock) thing is happening in the UK. Because of the article I linked to, I am much more aware of what's happening in the US. However, even if the electric shocks issue is not exactly the same here, compare this (from the petition above):
While secretly filming for the BBC and working for Amazon UK, undercover reporter Adam Littler had to fill orders relayed by a monitor mounted to his trolley. The monitor counted down the minimal seconds given to finish each task and find products stored in this huge, 800,000-square-foot facility. The menacing monitor also beeped every time he fell short of expectations and then snitched to management when his performance wasn't up to par. Adam then got a reprimand. At the end of the day, he was physically and emotionally exhausted -- and unlike his temporary colleagues, he didn't have to come back the next day.
to this (from the article I linked to):
"...I realize that for whatever relative youth and regular exercise and overachievement complexes I have brought to this job, I will never be able to keep up with the goals I've been given.
My scanner tells me in what exact section—there are nine merchandise sections, so sprawling that there's a map attached to my ID badge—of vast shelving systems the item I'm supposed to find resides. It also tells me how many seconds it thinks I should take to get there. Dallas sector, section yellow, row H34, bin 22, level D: wearable blanket. Battery-operated flour sifter. Twenty seconds. I count how many steps it takes me to speed-walk to my destination: 20. At 5-foot-9, I've got a decently long stride, and I only cover the 20 steps and locate the exact shelving unit in the allotted time if I don't hesitate for one second or get lost or take a drink of water before heading in the right direction as fast as I can walk or even occasionally jog.
"...I've started cringing every time my scanner shows a code that means the item I need to pick is on the ground, which, in the course of a 10.5-hour shift—much less the mandatory 12-hour shifts everyone is slated to start working next week—is literally hundreds of times a day. "How has OSHA signed off on this?" I've taken to muttering to myself. "Has OSHA signed off on this?" ("The thing about ergonomics," OSHA says when I call them later to ask, "is that OSHA doesn't have a standard. Best practices. But no laws.")
"...it hurts, oh, how my body hurts after failing to make my goals despite speed-walking or flat-out jogging and pausing every 20 or 30 seconds to reach on my tiptoes or bend or drop to the floor for 10.5 hours...
"By the fourth morning... my self-pity has turned into actual concern. There's a screaming pain running across the back of my shoulders. "You need to take 800 milligrams of Advil a day," a woman in her late 50s or early 60s advised me when we all congregated in the break room before work.
" "You'll feel carpal tunnel start to set in," one of the supervisors told me, "so you'll want to change hands." But that, too, he admitted, costs time, since you have to hit the bar code at just the right angle for it to scan, and your dominant hand is way more likely to nail it the first time. Time is not a thing I have to spare. I'm still only at 57 percent of my goal. ... I can break into goal-meeting suicide pace for short bouts, sure, but I can't keep it up for 10.5 hours."
It seems to me there are many issues in common. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the BBC programme yet (don't have a telly), but plan to watch it online - so it is possible I'm wrong - but based on the description of it, I feel pretty sure (I'd be willing to place a bet on it) that conditions in the UK are not a completely different ball of wax from conditions in the US.
IF there was a petition for the US that I knew of, I'd post it here as well. (I checked out the link that ChanteyLass posted, but it is old - and closed.) But since Amazon US and Amazon UK do not exist in their own little vacuums, I do assume that what happens to one may have (eventually) some impact on the other.
I am a US citizen and a UK resident - so you might say I am only "entitled" to sign petitions involving things in the US &/or UK.
I disagree. I don't see anything wrong with signing petitions concerning other countries. No doubt my signature will carry less weight than it would if I was a voter in that country, but even so - especially when a global corporation is concerned (one which - if they have any sense - will be paying attention to their image worldwide) - I don't think it hurts for them to see that people from other countries are taking an interest...
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sj
