After lying about the fact that some of his workers are under so much pressure that they are forced to make their needs in bottles to meet their quotas, Amazon silently said you’re sorry in his own very strange way and acknowledged that drivers actually do that. Then he promptly pointed the finger at other companies, such as UPS and Uber, and said that the drivers of those companies do too.
On a news article posted on Friday night before Easter, Amazon apologized to Wisconsin Democratic Representative Mark Pocan, with whom he fought in a crazy Twitter explosion last week over the issue of pee in the bottles. Pocan was commenting on another random and aggressive response from Amazon’s chief retailer, Dave Clark, who was fighting Senator Bernie Sanders for not being progressive enough.
“Paying workers $ 15 / hour doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you break the union and make workers urinate in water bottles,” Pocan tweeted at the time.
And so, although there is ample evidence that the company’s workers are unfortunately placed in situations that cause them to urinate in bottles, Amazon exploded and decided to lie. (In case you’re wondering, a Recode report states that the company’s aggressive communication moves came later CEO Jeff Bezos expressed his dissatisfaction that Amazon employees were not resisting hard enough against “inaccurate” or “misleading” criticism).
“You really don’t believe in this thing about peeing in bottles, do you? If that were true, no one would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees worldwide who are proud of what they do and have great salaries and health care from day one, ”says Amazon News. tweeted back in Pocan. “We hope that you can pass policies that lead other employers to offer what we already do.”
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The e-commerce giant’s response confused the internet and didn’t win many fans. After sitting on it for a few days, Amazon apparently concluded that this was not the company’s best moment.
In the news article, Amazon said its tweet in response to Pocan was “incorrect” and did not address its large driver population, instead focusing only on employees at its call centers. The company also added that the tweet did not receive “proper analysis” and did not meet its standards for accuracy.
Both points are debatable. It must be said that employees at distribution centers it’s not exactly easy to go to the bathroom too. Distribution center employees often reported holding their pee to avoid wasting “time off the job”, which some workers say can lead to disciplinary action and even dismissal, per motherboard.
Amazon denies, however, saying that in its distribution centers employees can go to the bathroom at any time. Considering that some officials claim that they cannot even break for meal or rest because of the amount of work that the company accumulates, this statement is a little hard to believe.
Now, this is where Amazon has acknowledged the problem its drivers face on the road that forces them to pee in bottles, but does not recognize their role in that, instead of choosing to attribute it to traffic, rural routes and the pandemic. However, there was nothing in the company’s statement about the workload it puts on its drivers – the motherboard claims that drivers usually deliver 300 packages per day in a 10-hour shift– and the consequences they face, including disciplinary action and termination, if they fail to meet their productivity quotas.
“[W]We know that drivers can and have difficulty finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this was especially the case during Covid, when many public restrooms were closed, ”wrote Amazon. “This is an age-old problem that spans the entire industry and is not specific to Amazon.”
The company added that while this is a problem across the industry, it wanted to solve it, but still didn’t know how.
As if denying any responsibility was not enough, Amazon then points the finger at other companies, like Uber and UPS, whose drivers also apparently had to relieve themselves in bottles or other containers. It includes links to nine links to stories from other media, and even the Pew Charitable Trust, about Uber, UPS and other companies and incorporates a handful of tweets from people sympathetic to your situation.
Honestly, it’s not just an elegant change from Amazon here. These companies are in the spotlight now because of a war of tweets that have started (yet, who knows what the future holds). And if this is supposed to be an apology, it doesn’t exactly make sense to start saying, “Well, other companies do that too”, instead of confessing their mistakes. This is not to say that these companies do not deserve scrutiny, however.
But the biggest flaw in Amazon’s weird apology was probably the people she didn’t apologize to: her employees who are forced to do their thing in bottles and, frankly, anything other than a proper bathroom. These are the people who deprive of food and water while driving to Amazon to avoid going to the bathroom, these are the people who are forced to pee and poop in extreme conditions, they are people who accept to be treated with less dignity for fear of losing their jobs. It is a fear that Amazon has created.
These are the people who deserved an apology. Pocan, the person who actually received it, issued the same call on a Twitter post on Saturday.
“Sigh. It’s not about me, it’s about your employees – that you don’t treat them with sufficient respect or dignity,” he wrote. “Start by recognizing the inadequate working conditions you have created for ALL of your workers, then fix it for everyone. and finally, let them unionize without interference. ”
You can read Amazon’s full excuses here.