WASHINGTON – E-commerce giant Amazon has apologised to a United States lawmaker after falsely denying that some of its drivers are forced at times to urinate in plastic bottles.
The flap started last week with a tweet from Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Wisconsin.
“Paying workers US$15/hr (RM62 an hour) doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles,” tweeted Pocan in an apparent reference to Amazon’s opposition to efforts to unionise a major facility in Alabama.
Amazon’s official account quickly responded, saying: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”
But, several news outlets then cited numerous Amazon employees who said they had, in fact, been left with little choice but to use plastic bottles.
And, the website The Intercept said it has obtained internal documents showing company executives are aware of the practice.
The workers’ testimony underlined the complaints of many Amazon employees – both at its processing facilities and among drivers – about what they say is a relentless work pace.
“We owe an apology to Representative Pocan,” said Amazon in a statement late Friday.
“The tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfilment centres”, each of which has dozens of restrooms that employees can use “at any time”, it said.
“We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid-19, when many public restrooms have been closed.”
It described the problem as “a long-standing, industry-wide issue”, adding: “We would like to solve it.”
The apology did not satisfy Pocan, who responded yesterday on Twitter.
“Sigh. This is not about me, this is about your workers – who you don’t treat with enough respect or dignity.
“Start by acknowledging the inadequate working conditions you’ve created for ALL your workers, then fix that for everyone & finally, let them unionise without interference.”
Workers at Amazon’s huge processing facility in Bessemer, Alabama, completed a vote on Monday on whether to unionise – an initiative strongly resisted by the company. The result has not yet been announced.
Amazon has successfully fended off unionisation efforts elsewhere in the US, though most of its facilities in Europe are unionised.
The company insists that its workers enjoy good pay and benefits by US standards. – AFP, April 4, 2021
