Harsh work conditions in Amazon workplaces

Anyone notice conditions in American workplaces are beginning to look a lot more like the ones in Chinese factories?

Amazon warehouses apparently are notoriously bad. Sounds almost like some of these workplaces chew them up and spit them out, treating their workers like disposable commodities.

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Kentucky — On an average day, 51-year-old Connie Milby covered more than 10 miles in her tennis shoes, walking and climbing up and down three flights of stairs to retrieve tools, toys and a vast array of other merchandise for Amazon.com shoppers.

She filled online orders for more than a decade, working through summer heat and winter chill inside the company’s south-central Kentucky warehouse.

One constant was the pace that Milby tried to keep to avoid write-ups from her supervisors that could put her $12.50-per-hour job at risk.

“At my age around here, there are not very many other opportunities to make what we make,” Milby said before beginning her 6:30 a.m. shift last October. “As long as my body holds up, I will keep working. But the way it feels, I don’t know how long that will be.”

Milby’s job here in Kentucky is a world away from Amazon’s rapidly expanding campus in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, where high-tech talent has created one of the cutting-edge companies of the Internet age.

She has been part of the massive blue-collar work force required to fulfill founder Jeff Bezos’ ambitious vision of Amazon as a company that rivals Microsoft and Apple in technological prowess, but also offers one-stop shopping worthy of a Wal-Mart.

According to Amazon, more than 15,000 of the company’s full-time employees work in its U.S. warehouses, called “fulfillment centers.” Amazon is expanding its work force at a breakneck pace to staff its global network of some 70 centers — 17 opened just last year.

In an industry that often offers scant benefits, Amazon provides full-time employees with stock shares after two years on the job, a matching 401(k) and health insurance. Temporary workers, such as those hired during the holiday rush, can buy medical coverage through staffing agencies.

Just as Amazon tracks and analyzes the habits of online shoppers, the company has created a hyper-efficient warehouse culture where worker performance is continually monitored and measured in pursuit of slashing costs and shipping times.

By the numbers, Amazon’s safety record stacks up well in an industry that has long been criticized for harsh working conditions and injuries.

“We measure progress on safety using the ‘recordable incidence rate,’ which is the primary metric defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA],” Amazon said. “From Jan. 1, 2006, to Sept. 30, 2011, our U.S. fulfillment network had an annual average recordable incidence rate ranging from 2.5 to 4.2. These rates are lower than for auto manufacturing, the warehousing industry and even for department stores.

But a federal lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania and interviews with a physician and warehouse workers in Washington and Kentucky suggest that the numbers Amazon is reporting may not tell the whole story.

In the lawsuit, settled in July, Amazon warehouse worker Paul Grady said a warehouse safety worker in Allentown, Pa., instructed him to tell emergency workers that his hip injury was not work-related, even though he says it was. Grady’s injury was first reported in an investigation of Amazon’s Pennsylvania warehouse operations last year by the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, which also found indoor temperatures soared so high that Amazon had ambulances parked outside to take workers to the hospital.

Three former workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Campbellsville told The Seattle Times there was pressure to manage injuries so they would not have to be reported to OSHA, such as attributing workplace injuries to pre-existing conditions or treating wounds in a way that did not trigger federal reports.

Pam Wethington, a former Campbellsville employee, took several months off work in 2002 because of stress fractures in both feet. She says her doctor attributed the injury to walking miles on the concrete floors of the warehouse, but Amazon disputed that the fractures were work-related.

A former warehouse safety official said in-house medical staff were asked to treat wounds, when possible, with bandages rather than refer workers to a doctor for stitches that could trigger federal reports. And warehouse officials tried to advise doctors on how to treat injured workers.

“We had doctors who refused to work with us because they would have managers call and argue with them,” he said.

Dave Clark, Amazon’s vice president for global customer fulfillment, says the company offers its workers financial incentives tied to safety. Those payments can be affected by the number of injuries at the facility, and also by individual tasks — such as whether an employee follows the rules for using and properly storing equipment, employees said.

“If your injury scores are low, you get more money,” said a receiving clerk at the Sumner warehouse who earned $12.50 an hour, plus an extra $200 one month because of the warehouse’s safety record.

(Sounds like financial incentives not to report injuries)​

Unrelenting efficiency

To get a better — although not comprehensive — sense of life on an Amazon warehouse floor, The Seattle Times interviewed more than 40 current and former Amazon warehouse workers. Reporters visited Campbellsville, home of one of Amazon’s oldest fulfillment centers, and Sumner, Pierce County, home of one of its newest facilities. A reporter also toured a two-year-old warehouse in West Phoenix while accompanied by company officials.

They found some employees who relished the challenges of working at an innovative company and appreciated the emphasis on safety. But they also found others who said that in its relentless push for efficiency, Amazon was quick to shed workers who, regardless of their tenure, could no longer measure up.

The majority of the current and former workers would speak only if guaranteed anonymity because they were worried that speaking publicly could harm their careers.

Of the three sites, Times reporters heard the harshest complaints about Campbellsville.

Amazon was greeted as an economic savior when it opened its warehouse there in 1999, soon after the town’s largest employer, Fruit of the Loom, shut down its textile plant.

The county’s unemployment rate then topped 22 percent. The state offered $19 million in tax credits to help offset the company’s $38 million investment. And Campbellsville, located within a day’s drive of more than half the nation’s population, had geography in its favor.

The area boasted a work force that, while somewhat older in profile than elsewhere in the Amazon network, had long tackled tough blue-collar jobs. Amazon hired more than 700 full-time workers and suddenly became the largest private employer in Taylor County, according to county statistics.

“The Amazon motto is ‘Work hard, have fun and make history,’ and that’s what we did,” said Wethington, who worked for more than a decade at the Campbellsville fulfillment center before she was fired last year for a safety violation.

But over time, said former workers at Campbellsville, production pressure from headquarters intensified amid constant turnover.

As those tensions spilled onto the warehouse floor, Amazon gained a reputation as a difficult place to earn a living.

“There would be phone conferences [with Seattle], and all this screaming, about production numbers. That was always the problem; the production numbers weren’t high enough,” said a former safety manager with oversight of the warehouse who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This was just a brutal place to work.”

Former managers said the company created a work environment where employees who complained about conditions, including excessive heat, risked retaliation.

After nearly two years on the job, one former manager was troubled enough about conditions to write an email to an Amazon regional vice president. He says he detailed concerns about unreasonable expectations of workers during extremely hot days, how production rates were set and other issues.

A week later, the former manager says, he was accused of a minor rules infraction and given the choice of leaving the company or getting fired.

“I said that this makes no sense,” he recalled. “There were huge problems at Campbellsville, and I wanted them to do an investigation.” The tough tactics extended to the treatment of sick and injured workers, according to a former human-resources employee.

“They would have meetings on how we could get rid of people who were hurt. It was horrible,” she said. “I would try to find them [the workers] light-duty jobs that they could do, and they [managers] would say no. They wanted the workers to exhaust their time off so they could fire them.”

Jennifer Owens, who had worked at Campbellsville for more than a decade, said she lost her job last September after she returned to work from an approved medical leave for neck pain caused by an auto accident.

“They just came back and said, ‘You’re fired,’ ” Owens recalled. “I really didn’t say anything. It was like — God, I can’t lose my job. I got to have my health insurance.”

In Campbellsville, as in Pennsylvania, Amazon employees struggled with heat. Each summer, former employees said, some workers were taken to the hospital because of heat illness.

Although they got longer breaks, workers said, production goals did not ease as temperatures climbed.

A former Amazon safety official in Campbellsville wanted to discuss reducing the work pace when temperatures pushed over 100 degrees but says he never dared broach the subject with management. “I knew that was off the table — not an option,” said the former safety official. Instead, he outfitted roving managers with backpacks full of Gatorade, which they served to workers so the workers wouldn’t have to leave their posts.

The summer heat also drew the attention of Dixon, the Campbellsville physician.

“It was definitely an issue,” said Dixon, who confirmed that some workers were sent to the emergency room. “I told my patients they need to drink more water, and had a conversation with management to figure out what we could do.”

Susan Draper, director for Kentucky’s Division of Occupational Health and Safety Compliance, noted that Amazon was not the only warehouse operation that had trouble with excessive heat. She said Amazon has responded well to concerns raised by state inspectors and was “always cooperative.”

At the 2-year-old, air-conditioned warehouse in West Phoenix, workers, most of whom appeared young and fit, moved a record 2,086,548 items from the shelves to the loading docks in one week, an accomplishment emblazoned on a banner in the middle of the warehouse. The 1.2 million-square-foot building hums — literally, and at times loudly — as conveyors whisk items across, around and through the building at speeds of about 20 mph.

“I’m obsessed with efficiency, and this is the most productive place I’ve ever seen,” said Shelby Lewis, a 22-year-old West Phoenix warehouse worker who wants to make her career at Amazon. “We change stuff quickly here. It’s constantly getting better.”

Just like at West Phoenix, performance measurement is paramount at Amazon’s Sumner warehouse.

Employees are coached by a “problem solver” who roams the warehouse floor with a laptop on wheels and offers feedback on how to do things better. Each morning and afternoon, during breaks, management calls out the names of workers who have made their goals.

“They are a driven corporation — more driven than any place I’ve worked,” said one worker who handles freight.

But those who don’t measure up, that worker and others said, can quickly get the boot.

A supervisor in Sumner, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the company keeps track of mistakes, and penalizes workers for errors such as not properly scanning merchandise, even if the scanner itself caused the problem. Safety violations and other missteps also can result in write-ups that lead to firing, employees said.

Amazon has built its network of fulfillment centers in an era when union membership has been declining. Organized labor now represents less than 8 percent of the warehouse workforce.

In Campbellsville, the mean wage for full-time workers — including incentive pay and stock options that vest after two years on the job — tops $14 an hour, according to an Amazon official. That is substantially higher than the mean hourly wage of less than $10 an hour for warehouse workers in south-central Kentucky. But it lags far behind the top tier of unionized workers in the area, who may make more than $20 per hour after four years on the job at a Kroger grocery warehouse, according to Kenny Lauersdorf with Teamsters Local 89.

Former employees at Amazon distribution centers say that workers are warned of the perils of unions. “We had a meeting once a year, and they would put the unions down and say that they would take money out of our checks,” said Owens, who worked at the Campbellsville plant.
​

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-warehouse-jobs-push-workers-to-physical-limit/


Well I suppose these jobs are fine for younger workers under age 35 who are in good physical shape, but once the workers get older what's going to happen to them then? Many won't be able to keep up with the intense pace.

Does anyone remember those Apple iPad factories in China that had to install netting around the buildings because there were too many workers jumping off the roof trying to commit suicide?

 

turned out to be fake news, suicide rate there was lower than in America

 

When Amazon.com Inc. disclosed its workers’ median annual salary of $28,446 last week, the predominantly blue-collar nature of its workforce became clear.The figure puts Amazon on par with chocolate manufacturer Hershey Co., slightly above retailer Home Depot Inc.—and miles below the $240,430 median annual compensation at Facebook, according to the companies’ latest proxy statements.

Amazon’s Typical Worker Is in a Warehouse Making $28,446 a Year - WSJ

That figure is before taxes of course.

So in many areas that is going to mean that $12,000 a year is going to rent. Wouldn't qualify for a house priced higher then $90,000.

A car , often necessary to get to work, probably runs about $4,800 year.
The employee share of FICA taxes is about $2,100
So now we are at $18,900 dollars a year and we haven't even gotten to food. Which is probably $200 a month or $2,400 a year.
Didn't mention health insurance or auto insurance. That is going to take a bit out of that median income as well. Maybe a $1,000 a month or $12,000 a year.

Woops something has to give because I just went over total income.

This isn't good folks. It means a lot of these people can't afford to live on what they make.

 

This isn't new news mind you. See, for example, the previous research into the WalMart Effect.

 

It's a minimum wage job. (or near minimum wage)
Unskilled labour.

You don't pay for your whole household off of it because both your mum and your dad have jobs too.

It's not good money but most households have multiple workers.

 

Maybe what's happening has something to do with this:



This is nothing the country hasn't seen before but the last time it happened was more than 80 years ago. It's like something out of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
Employers don't care if they burn out their workers, because unemployment is so high. So it's like a revolving door of workers (almost). Get ever more productivity out of workers, and if they burn out or their bodies break down they sit on the sidelines unemployed and unpaid until they're ready to go through it again.

You know come to think of it, I remember many years ago, I think 12 to be exact, I rented a room in an old Korean woman's house and her son and his girlfriend were living there. They were not working (even though they had college degrees from a good school). I overheard his girlfriend say she had had a job working in a Costco warehouse and then working in finance for Hyundai, and she just got burned out. They paid her decently well but just overworked her and she couldn't keep doing it. (In particular she said in the warehouse they ran them like Nazis)
This was a Korean woman, will a college degree from an academically rigorous school, so I don't believe she was just lazy. Well anyway, that's just a memory that stands out to me here.

 

And there's always the food bank...

 

Cool liberals hate Walmart and now Amazon!!
well, govt taxes away about $70k from every family in America. Cut it way back and working would yield a far higher salary.

 

and we could always let the saintly Republican Trump ship 30 million illegals home to create a worker shortage and huge upward pressure on wages

 

To control immigration, at least according to right wing hope, you'd need to impose fascism. I don't wish you luck with that endeavour...

 

That's a bit of a tangled irony, because Amazon holds itself up as a progressive liberal company.
They located their headquarters in the heart of Seattle, that should say enough right there.

 

why so afraid to tell us what it says?? Obviously if they paid more they could not compete and would go bankrupt. And????

 

no just build a wall, obviously.

 

Good luck! Watch Escape from NY to get some ideas

 

money is issue not ideas 1+1=2

 

Amazon sucks.

 

I was taking the mike!

 

MSM = FAKE NEWS

 

i love saving money and time thanks to Amazon. Old people really love it too!!!

 

Nevertheless Bezos sucks, and Amazon sucks.

 

yes suicide rate in USA was higher than at Foxconn factories

 

Well Bezos is a flaming liberal so maybe, but saving money, time, effort shopping on line is beautiful, especially for old folks its game changer.

 

Jeff Bezos is IMO, a public enemy. Amazon sucks -ditto WaPo.

 

you mean because he's flaming dumb liberal or world's richest man