Amazon Treats Me Worse Than The Warehouse Robots - That's Why I'm Walking Out
Last edited Tue Feb 28, 2023, 10:17 PM - Edit history (2)
- 'Amazon treats me worse than the warehouse robots - that’s why I’m walking out,' The Guardian, Feb. 28, 2023. Ed. -Jeff Bezos is making billions while we are offered an extra 50p an hour for exhausting work, doing long hours on our feet just to make ends meet.
Darren Westwood works at Amazon’s Coventry, UK warehouse and is a member of the GMB union.
Timed to go to the toilet. Told off for leaning. Monitored for each package completed. As a worker at Amazon, I often feel that we aren’t being treated as people. But for me, the moment I knew we needed to go on strike was when we were told we’d be getting a pay rise of just 50p extra an hour. We came into work one day and the managers were holding briefings – telling us that this was all we were going to get, and that we shouldn’t expect anything better. Just 50p extra, when we’re facing rising prices in every shop and energy bills going through the roof. The company describes the offer as “competitive pay”, pointing out that we get employee benefits on top of the hourly wage. Yet the company is making millions – if not billions – for the people at the top.
Everyone who I work with at the warehouse in Coventry is frustrated. Frustrated at bad pay, at the long hours we have to work just to make ends meet, and at sky-high profits that we don’t see any benefit from.
The shifts are hard work, spent all on our feet, walking miles back and forth through large warehouses. All of that for just £10.50 an hour. That’s why about 400 workers at our warehouse are striking today. We are treated worse than the robots doing automated tasks in the warehouses. If the robots have an issue, the company pays for them to be serviced, whereas if we drop below certain targets multiple times, we can be fired – we have to sort it out or get out. (The co. says that its system “recognises great performance”, and that it offers “coaching” to employees who aren’t meeting targets.)
If you take too long to find a toilet in the huge warehouse, managers will ask you for account for this time – using doublespeak to describe it as being “idle”. Which other workplace would tolerate this? How can this be a reasonable thing for a manager to ask about in a 21st-cent. workplace in Britain? In the UK last year, Amazon made £204m in profit. Amazon's profits shot up during Covid. As the high street was closed, people relied on ordering things online. We were still in the back end of the warehouses working, & Bezos was still making money – even more money than before. From 2019 to 2020, profits nearly doubled to $21.3bn (£17.7bn) & rose again for 2021 to $33.4bn.
At the start of 2021, Amazon could have given every one of its workers across the world a £43,000 bonus out of the increase in profits. We were offered a 50p-an-hr. increase in Aug. But with the cost of living soaring, inflation at 10.1% & work conditions harder than ever, we are clear - a 4.8% pay rise isn’t good enough. We deserve a £15-an-hr. wage. Amazon relies on its workers. Without us the business couldn’t run. But it refuses to talk to our union. At Coventry, more than a quarter of workers will be striking today. I see colleagues falling asleep on the bus to and from the depot. They are exhausted...https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/28/amazon-warehouse-robots-striking-50p-pay-jeff-bezos
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- Coventry is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. Formerly part of Warwickshire until 1451, Coventry had a population of 345,328 at the 2021 census, making it the 10th largest city in England and the 12th largest in the United Kingdom. It is the 2nd largest city in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham, from which it is separated by an area of green belt known as the Meriden Gap, and the 3rd largest in the wider Midlands after Birmingham and Leicester.
..Coventry is also the most central city in England, being only 12 miles (19 km) south-west of the country's geographical centre in Leicestershire. Coventry became an important and wealthy city of national importance during the Middle Ages. Later it became an important industrial centre, becoming home to a large bicycle industry in the 19th c., in the 20th c. it became a major centre of the British motor industry, this made it a target for German air raids during WW2, and in Nov. 1940, much of the historic city centre was destroyed by a large air raid. The city was rebuilt after the war, and the motor industry thrived until the mid-1970s, although by the late-1970s/early-1980s Coventry was in an economic crisis and amongst the country's highest levels of unemployment due to major plant closures and the collapse of the respective local supply-chain... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry
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