Amazon employees have often complained about the company's grueling work schedules, with many drivers claiming they are forced to urinate into plastic water bottles because they cannot take breaks to relieve themselves for fear of missing the day's goals.
What's worse is that the company has reportedly known about the problem for at least the past few months. However, the company denies these allegations, angering its employees and the Internet in general.
A tweet by American politician and member of the US House of Representatives Mark Pocanlit a firestorm at Amazon. Specifically, the tweet stated the following: “Paying employees $15 an hour does not make you a progressive workplace when you prevent unionization and employees are forced to pee in water bottles.
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Amazon's official Twitter account responded to the tweet with the following: "You don't really believe the whole peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, no one would be working for us."
However, there are many who believe these reports to be true. This is for a very simple reason: there are many allegations of such incidents that have been documented by employees and journalists around the world.
Many journalists have been reporting on the company’s labor practices. One such case is British journalist James Bloodworth, whose book “Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain” describes his experience of working at low-wage companies like Amazon. Bloodworth’s book led to some of the most widely publicized stories about Amazon workers being forced to urinate into bottles to avoid wasting time on the job, but it’s not the only evidence of the poor working conditions at the e-commerce giant.
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These claims were corroborated by Will Evans of the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as Lauren Kaori Gurley of Motherboard. Gurley also wrote a story with photographic evidence, including several examples from the Amazon delivery driver subreddit.
Specifically, on the Reddit forum for Amazon drivers, which is however impossible to fully verify for authenticity, there are hundreds of comments from drivers who claim that they often have to urinate into water bottles due to a lack of breaks during work, especially in the context of the pandemic where deliveries have increased.
Another journalist, Ken Bensinger from BuzzFeed News, also verified these scenarios.
New evidence was brought to light by “The Intercept,” analyzing cases of employees who not only urinated in bottles, but also defecated in bags, with the most damning revelation being that Amazon knew about this, since it had begun punishing employees who left these items inside the company's delivery vehicles.
This is not the first time that Amazon employees, who are notorious for their grueling hours, have spoken out about the problem. Workers previously told The Guardian that they had to urinate into water bottles on a daily basis for fear of losing delivery rates.
Amazon's sales surged in 2020 and founder Jeff Bezos saw his fortune increase by at least $70 billion during the pandemic. The new revelations are the latest in a series of incidents about how Amazon treats its workers, especially drivers.
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The new revelations come on top of allegations of a high rate of employee injuries in Amazon warehouses (7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees), workers dying from COVID-19 because the company didn't do enough to protect them, production goals that can only be achieved by robots, and a harsh crackdown on employee unionization efforts.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that drivers are being forced to sign “biometric consent” forms to continue working for the company, allowing AI cameras to monitor the drivers, of which there are around 75,000 in the US, while they are on shift.
