Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon
Speaker 1: customer because you guys paid progress. You guys paid problems.
Speaker 1: This is Megacal, an investigative podcast exposing some of the
Speaker 1: world's most unethical corporations. This series is about Amazon. I'm
Speaker 1: Jake Hanrahan, journalists and documentary filmmaker. Mega Corp is produced
Speaker 1: by H eleven for Cool Zone Media. So right now
Speaker 1: I'm outside one of the Amazon warehouses in the UK.
Speaker 1: They look pretty similar anywhere you go, really, I just
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to get an idea of the scale
Speaker 1: of one of these places. I mean that absolutely massive, big,
Speaker 1: ugly corrugated metal looking thing. It's got the Amazon with
Speaker 1: its little smile symbol logo on the front. In this area,
Speaker 1: it used to be a kind of woodland and then
Speaker 1: they just obviously tarmact it and turned it into an
Speaker 1: industrial estate and built warehouses. Um, it is what it is.
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to get an idea of the
Speaker 1: scale of the place, and I sort of wanted to
Speaker 1: start this series here at ground level, if you like.
Speaker 1: Right now here outside of this warehouse where I am,
Speaker 1: there are workers in their working twenty four hours obviously
Speaker 1: different shifts, but they're constantly working and getting treated horribly
Speaker 1: very often. So why don't we start here. Let's start
Speaker 1: at the ground level, where the workers are inside the warehouse.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos made eleven and a half million dollars every
Speaker 1: hour of the pandemic. He shared almost none of it
Speaker 1: with the warehouse workers. Amazon's working conditions hundreds of points
Speaker 1: on zero as contracts are subjected to a regime described
Speaker 1: as horrendous and exhausting. They're monitored at all times, Toilet
Speaker 1: visits are regulated. Amazon On, which has over one hundred
Speaker 1: seventy five fulfillment centers around the world and more than
Speaker 1: half a million employees, was ranked one of the twelve
Speaker 1: worst companies to work for. On average, Amazon warehouse workers
Speaker 1: are paid around seventeen dollars an hour in the US
Speaker 1: and around fourteen pounds an hour in the UK. These wages,
Speaker 1: employers will often work ten to twelve hour shifts, constantly
Speaker 1: on their feet, where they're expected to hit never ending targets.
Speaker 1: A package must be dealt with every thirty seconds. If
Speaker 1: you work in as a picker, you're expected to process
Speaker 1: three hundred items per hour. You've given nine seconds to
Speaker 1: take each item from a robot that delivers shelf upon
Speaker 1: shelf of Amazon packages. Staff are constantly filmed in the
Speaker 1: warehouse as they work and their toilet breaks at even time.
Speaker 1: Workers get two fifteen minute breaks, much of which can
Speaker 1: be taken up by just walking to the toilet through
Speaker 1: the vast expanse of the warehouse. People often fall asleep
Speaker 1: standing up will become injured at work, As reported by
Speaker 1: a journalist Brian Monegus, Leaked documents revealed in that New
Speaker 1: York Staten Island Amazon warehouse reported injuries over three times
Speaker 1: the industry average. To put that into context, the injury
Speaker 1: percentages at the Amazon warehouse were worse than that steel
Speaker 1: refineries and sawmills all over the world. Workers have voiced
Speaker 1: anger at these horrific working conditions. I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: some kind of modern day gulag here. This is the
Speaker 1: ground floor of Amazon, a company that's made its founder
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos the richest man on Earth. Bezos is worth
Speaker 1: an estimated one hundred and seventies seven billion dollars. On
Speaker 1: working conditions that we've just mentioned at Amazon, Bezos has said, quote,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of our working conditions. For context, here's
Speaker 1: what that quote is from It's a twenty eighteen Business
Speaker 1: Insider interview. Today was um it's employing five hundreds sixty
Speaker 1: six thousand people. You're probably the biggest drop crid of
Speaker 1: recent times. At the same time, you're aggressively criticized by
Speaker 1: unions and by media for being low wages, for inappropriate
Speaker 1: working conditions. How do you deal with these accusations? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, any criticism, My approach to criticism and
Speaker 1: what I teach and preach inside Amazon is when you're criticized,
Speaker 1: first look in a mirror and decide are your critics right.
Speaker 1: If they're right, change, don't want my list, No, but
Speaker 1: not in this case. But we've had critics be right
Speaker 1: before and we've changed. We have we we have made mistakes,
Speaker 1: and you know, I can go I can go through
Speaker 1: a long list of probably the one of the early
Speaker 1: most painful ones. Let's give this forward a bit because
Speaker 1: basically he just diverts very quickly away for the criticism
Speaker 1: that was leveled at him and the issue of working conditions.
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of our working conditions and am very
Speaker 1: proud of the wages that we pay, very proud of
Speaker 1: our working As I said that clip, is from mayen
Speaker 1: full six months since some of the most noteworthy investigations
Speaker 1: into Amazon working conditions began to surface. And that's what
Speaker 1: Bazos had to say. I spoke to journalist James blood
Speaker 1: Worth about the conditions inside Amazon warehouses across the UK.
Speaker 1: Blood Worth went undercover working in one of the warehouses
Speaker 1: in sen for his book Hired six Months undercover in
Speaker 1: low wage Britain. So I got a job with Amazon
Speaker 1: through an employment agency called Transline. Um, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to get the job, So you just essentially had to
Speaker 1: fill out a pile of forms. You also had to
Speaker 1: take a drug and alcoholture, which was slightly bizarre because
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I've never had a job where I
Speaker 1: had done had to do that before. Um, and then
Speaker 1: you know, I was given a job kind of a
Speaker 1: week later. The job itself, I mean, my first impressions
Speaker 1: off the Amazon warehouse when I was going in, I
Speaker 1: remember writing in my diary that the atmosphere of the
Speaker 1: Amazon warehouse had the atmosphere of what I imagined a
Speaker 1: prison might feel like. Now that seems like hyperbole and
Speaker 1: and it is to an extent, but I I did
Speaker 1: think the place there was this awful like fearful atmosphere.
Speaker 1: In the UK, there were currently twenty one Amazon warehouses.
Speaker 1: One of their largest is here. It's situated in Essex
Speaker 1: and it ships around one point two million items a year.
Speaker 1: Amazon employees fifty five thousand people in the UK, the
Speaker 1: majority of them working long shifts on the warehouse floor
Speaker 1: is James Bloodworth did. The one thing that struck me
Speaker 1: as very unjust was amazon sickness policy. So when I
Speaker 1: worker was off sick, you'd you'd essentially be punished for
Speaker 1: taking a day off sick, even if you had a
Speaker 1: note from the doctors. So I tested this policy out myself.
Speaker 1: So I was actually ill one day I was working
Speaker 1: at Amazon. I had a very heavy cold. I phoned up,
Speaker 1: you know, the morning I was during at one o'clock
Speaker 1: for my shrift one pm. I phoned up early in
Speaker 1: the morning and said, I won't be able to make
Speaker 1: it in today. I'm feeling ill. I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I can bring a note from the doctors if if
Speaker 1: you want me to, because I was, Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: actually ill, And they said, no, that's fine. You've you know,
Speaker 1: you've phoned up enough time before as as requested. So
Speaker 1: so it won't be a problem. And then when I
Speaker 1: returned to work the next day, I was told by
Speaker 1: an Amazon supervisor who came to find me, he gave
Speaker 1: me a disciplinary point. Um, so you had this point toys,
Speaker 1: some six of these disciplinaries, you lose your job. But
Speaker 1: they gave me a disciplinary point. He did before taking
Speaker 1: the day are sick, and I explained my situation that,
Speaker 1: you know, I offered a note from the doctor, and
Speaker 1: I asked, you know, how is this even fair because
Speaker 1: it felt profoundly unjust because I've been ill and you
Speaker 1: can't help getting sick, you know sometimes. But they said,
Speaker 1: you know, this is what Amazon have always done, and
Speaker 1: that was one of the policies that was happening at
Speaker 1: the warehouse I was working in and other warehouses Amazon warehouses,
Speaker 1: because I've heard similar things from other workers. It was
Speaker 1: if you were off sick, you know, however good your
Speaker 1: reason you would you would be given a disciplinary for that.
Speaker 1: But the hell is a disciplinary point. There's a point
Speaker 1: that they would just call them a point, but each
Speaker 1: point is that it is a disciplinary So you Amazon
Speaker 1: management would give you points for breaking their rules in
Speaker 1: some way or not breaking their rules just because they felt,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly capricious on that day. So I remember
Speaker 1: people would were threatened with disciplinary points, for example for
Speaker 1: spending too much time in the bathroom. So we were
Speaker 1: in this warehouse that was seven hundred thousand square feet.
Speaker 1: This warehousing rusually in Staffordshire and there would be signs
Speaker 1: boasting that it was the size of ten football pitchures.
Speaker 1: So it's a huge, huge warehouse with four floors, and
Speaker 1: we only had access in the in the warehouse to
Speaker 1: two bathrooms which was situated at one side of this
Speaker 1: big warehouse. And to reach the bathrooms you had to
Speaker 1: go through airport starts security anytime you left the anytime
Speaker 1: you of the warehouse, because there was always this this
Speaker 1: fear that we were somehow trying to steal things, that
Speaker 1: workers were trying to steal it from the Amazon has
Speaker 1: Now I'm sure it did happen sometimes, but but it
Speaker 1: also meant that every time you wanted to go to
Speaker 1: the toilet, every time you wanted to go on your
Speaker 1: lunch break, you would have to pass through the airport
Speaker 1: style security. So or so curiousy you know, in a
Speaker 1: in a high end nightclub where you have to take
Speaker 1: your belt off, they go through your wallet and stuff.
Speaker 1: You put it on this like tray you know that
Speaker 1: slides slides next to the slides, they slide it across
Speaker 1: next to the you know this kind of frame you
Speaker 1: walk through to scan you and all of this, you
Speaker 1: know take it takes time. So like anytime you wanted
Speaker 1: to use the bathroom, all of this time is not
Speaker 1: accounted for. You don't get time for toilet breaks. This
Speaker 1: is called idle time. And then if you clock up
Speaker 1: too much quote quote idle time, as they call it,
Speaker 1: you would be given a disciplinary point. So you had
Speaker 1: effectively work as being given disciplinary points for going to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. So just imagine that for a second. You
Speaker 1: work in twelve hours shifts in a huge warehouse where
Speaker 1: productivity is literally monitored constantly via video cameras, and you're
Speaker 1: timed on how quickly you work. You're earning a low wage,
Speaker 1: and then every time you need to go to the toilet,
Speaker 1: you're searched as if you're boarding a flight somewhere. To
Speaker 1: add insult to injury, you're also highly likely to incur
Speaker 1: a disciplinary point if you're laid back due to all
Speaker 1: the time spent going through security. Imagine that every day,
Speaker 1: all day for five days a week just to earn
Speaker 1: barely enough to get by it. That's how the richest
Speaker 1: man on earth treats what are, in my opinion, his
Speaker 1: most important workers. Without the warehouse staff moving out all
Speaker 1: the products on time, his whole business collapses. Now due
Speaker 1: to the ridiculous time restrictions and the constant monitoring of
Speaker 1: all staff productivity, even when they go to the toilet,
Speaker 1: many Amazon workers are forced to literally piss in a
Speaker 1: bottle to avoid stopping their work. So during one of
Speaker 1: my shifts at Amazon at the warehouse, um, I was
Speaker 1: the one who found the bottle of urine in a
Speaker 1: coke bottle. It was very obvious by the color of
Speaker 1: the liquor. What's what's happened. And it was also obvious
Speaker 1: because people were afraid to take bathroom breaks in the
Speaker 1: warehouse because they were being given, uh given and threatened
Speaker 1: with disciplinary points for what was called idle time by Amazon.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean there was a survey when I
Speaker 1: was working in the warehouse by a group called Organize,
Speaker 1: which surveyed a hundred workers in the way wherehouse I
Speaker 1: worked with, and it found the survey found that of
Speaker 1: workers questioned said they were afraid to take bathroom breaks
Speaker 1: because of productivity targets. Earlier this year, when U S
Speaker 1: Senator Bernie Sanders went to support Amazon workers who were
Speaker 1: trying to unionize, then Amazon executive and now Amazon CEO
Speaker 1: Dave Clerk taunted Sanders. As documentary by journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Speaker 1: In the intercept on Twitter, Dave Clark said, quote, so,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear about fifteen dollars an hour
Speaker 1: and healthcare, Senator Sanders will be speaking downtown. But if
Speaker 1: you would like to make at least fifteen dollars an
Speaker 1: hour and have good healthcare, Amazon is hiring. End quote.
Speaker 1: US Representative Mark Percan replied, saying, quote paying workers fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars an hour doesn't make you a progressive workplace when
Speaker 1: you union bust and make workers urinate in water bottles.
Speaker 1: End quote. To this, the official Amazon News Twitter account,
Speaker 1: which has two hundred thousand followers, replied saying, quote, you
Speaker 1: don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?
Speaker 1: If that were true, nobody would work for us. The
Speaker 1: truth is that we have over a million incredible employees
Speaker 1: around the world who are proud of what they do
Speaker 1: and have great wages. And healthcare from day one. End quote,
Speaker 1: as we've just heard from James Bloodworth. Actually it is
Speaker 1: true people do piss in bottles whilst working for Amazon
Speaker 1: because they're worried that simply going to the toilet will
Speaker 1: earn them a disciplinary point if they don't do it
Speaker 1: quick enough. Now, James Bloodworth saw this in six and
Speaker 1: in one it is still going on. This practice is
Speaker 1: actually more common Amazon warehouses than the Amazon used Twitter
Speaker 1: account would like you to believe. In the same article
Speaker 1: by Ken Clippenstein that I just mentioned, he provides evidence
Speaker 1: showing that pissing in bottles at Amazon warehouses is so
Speaker 1: widespread due to pressure to meet quotas that managers frequently
Speaker 1: referenced it during meetings and in formal policy documents and emails.
Speaker 1: Clippenstein obtained some of these Amazon documents and eight quote.
Speaker 1: The practice these documents show was known to management, which
Speaker 1: identified it as a recurring infraction, but did nothing to
Speaker 1: ease the pressure that caused it. In some cases, employees
Speaker 1: even defecated in bags end quote. It's grim, it's brutal,
Speaker 1: but it's the reality. A confidential Amazon email is also
Speaker 1: provided in Clippenstein's article. It's from May twenty just last year,
Speaker 1: and it was sent by an on road area manager
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh in America. I'll read the whole thing out
Speaker 1: as I think it's yet another item of interest here
Speaker 1: that seriously undermines Amazon's claims that the peeing in water
Speaker 1: bottles thing is untrue. Quote Hello. This evening, an associate
Speaker 1: discovered human feces in an Amazon bag that was returned
Speaker 1: to station by a driver. This is the third occasion
Speaker 1: in the last two months when bags have been returned
Speaker 1: to station with poop inside. We understand that the d
Speaker 1: as may have emergencies while on road, and especially during
Speaker 1: COVID d as have struggled to find bathrooms while delivering. Regardless,
Speaker 1: das cannot must not return bags to station with poop inside.
Speaker 1: We've noticed an uptic recently of all kinds of unsanitary
Speaker 1: garbage being left inside backs, used masks, gloves, bottles of urine.
Speaker 1: By scanning the QR code on the bag, we can
Speaker 1: easily identify the d A who was in possession of
Speaker 1: the bag last These behaviors are unacceptable and will result
Speaker 1: in Tier one infractions going forward. Please communicate this message
Speaker 1: to your driver's I know it may seem obvious or
Speaker 1: like something you shouldn't need to coach, But please be
Speaker 1: explicit when communicating the message that they cannot poop all
Speaker 1: eave bottles of urine inside bags. The health and safety
Speaker 1: of all the as and Amazon associates will always be
Speaker 1: our top priority. None of us should have to deal
Speaker 1: with these kinds of messes. Please respond and confirm that
Speaker 1: you have received this email. Thanks for your support. End quote.
Speaker 1: Now I get it you're gonna say, well, yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: people should not ship in bags and pissing bottles. Whether
Speaker 1: it worked, that is absolutely disgusting. Well, yeah, it is
Speaker 1: absolutely disgusting. But ask yourself if someone could have the
Speaker 1: time to go to the toilet and wouldn't risk losing
Speaker 1: their job for it, do you think they would really
Speaker 1: take a ship in a bag and pissing a bottle instead?
Speaker 1: I doubt it very much. A lot of this is
Speaker 1: due to pressure from the quotas put on the workers
Speaker 1: by Amazon. To get a more recent firsthand account of
Speaker 1: the working conditions inside Amazon warehouses, I spoke to Brian Denning.
Speaker 1: Denning worked well Amazon in the p d X nine
Speaker 1: warehouse in trout Dale, Oregon, in America. He was there
Speaker 1: from my to December, so just last year. Flu Center
Speaker 1: pd X nine is a little under a million square
Speaker 1: feet about forty football field in size four stories and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I worked there in inbound stow. I was doing
Speaker 1: um stowing into the robotic cabinets and also I worked
Speaker 1: as a lead water spider and water spider and that's
Speaker 1: basically just pulling palettes of freight to the floor where
Speaker 1: I'm working. I hired on on a night shift there. Um,
Speaker 1: the hiring processes as post people are pretty aware. It
Speaker 1: was us almost entirely hands off. The only time I
Speaker 1: was interacted with the human beings when I came in
Speaker 1: to get a photo form my uh my photo badge
Speaker 1: and then got in and uh, it's ten hour shifts
Speaker 1: is when I started there. And then they pretty much
Speaker 1: almost immediately went to mandatory extra times when they call
Speaker 1: m E T. There's no mandatory over time, and that
Speaker 1: was often with anywhere from a couple of hours notice
Speaker 1: to four days notice was pretty average, so you wouldn't
Speaker 1: know what your day's offered necessarily until you got You
Speaker 1: knew which day was supposed to be your m ET day,
Speaker 1: but it would be scheduled pretty short notice on that.
Speaker 1: The other thing I noticed was we went from ten
Speaker 1: hours to eleven hours almost right away as well, So um,
Speaker 1: I went up to fifty five hour weeks. Most everyone
Speaker 1: else in the in the FC was fifty five hour weeks,
Speaker 1: and that during those um seven months I worked there,
Speaker 1: we had four and a half months of mandatory over time.
Speaker 1: Just just be clear. So you could literally turn up
Speaker 1: for work and they're like, right, you're working an extra
Speaker 1: four hours a day or whatever. Sorry off your god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not necessarily an extra four hours, but they could definitely
Speaker 1: um end the shift with almost little or no notice,
Speaker 1: and also add a shift with the little or no
Speaker 1: notice a couple of hours and you find out, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: by the way, you're working tomorrow or um yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be pretty short noticed for for changes in your
Speaker 1: schedule for sure. And what were the working of ours like,
Speaker 1: uh so it's all concrete and steel inside with um
Speaker 1: a ton of conveyor belts. It's relatively loud because everyone's
Speaker 1: pulling pallette jacks. But but a couple of things that
Speaker 1: I noticed right away also was there's definitely a mix
Speaker 1: of people in the in the Villain Center, from young
Speaker 1: to old, all kinds of different groupings, um, different ethnicities
Speaker 1: and everything else that said, But I noticed the most
Speaker 1: common thing was how many injuries there were, people limping,
Speaker 1: people of bad shoulders, bad knees, bad feet. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then seeing how fast the attrition rate was. So I
Speaker 1: hired on there in May. The group I hired on
Speaker 1: with was maybe ten people, and by like July, three
Speaker 1: of them were gone. And then um, by December, I
Speaker 1: think I was maybe there's one other person in my
Speaker 1: hiring group that I still see the building. Um, everybody
Speaker 1: else had left Amazon and six weeks it was a
Speaker 1: pretty average turnover while I was there. Um. And certainly
Speaker 1: the other thing was that about it And this is
Speaker 1: just kind of my own part experience, and the people
Speaker 1: mentioned this in different reference as well. But I so,
Speaker 1: I've done five years in prison in the United States
Speaker 1: and worked in prison furniture factories and prison kitchens. I've
Speaker 1: worked on my feet in jobs, including my first baker
Speaker 1: jobs like a twelve hours shifts, like a twenty minute
Speaker 1: break in the middle. Um. And so I'm used to
Speaker 1: like hard work. I'm used to heavy labor. I'm used
Speaker 1: to like shitting conditions. Um. This job in Amazon was
Speaker 1: the most humanizing job I've ever worked in my life. So,
Speaker 1: just in case you were wondering there, I did ask
Speaker 1: Brian Denning why was he in prison? And it turns out,
Speaker 1: as a much younger man, he went in with a
Speaker 1: gun into a bank and did one man armed bank robbery.
Speaker 1: Didn't work out, obviously, he ended up in prison. You know,
Speaker 1: that's life. But I think the most interesting thing about
Speaker 1: this is that this guy is literally saying he's done
Speaker 1: five years in serious prisons in America and he found
Speaker 1: the working conditions in Amazon more oppressive than the work
Speaker 1: he had to do in prison, and he was zing
Speaker 1: in a sense of like just um, I didn't know
Speaker 1: my manager was for the first three months. There was
Speaker 1: a picture like on my on the app of someone
Speaker 1: who's mostly my manager that I never met. The only
Speaker 1: time you interact with another person is whether they're coming
Speaker 1: to tell you that either you're not sewing fast enough,
Speaker 1: or you're making errors or something along those lines. Mostly
Speaker 1: so it's really isolating, really dehumanizing. In a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Everything is through apps. Everything's like a computer screen that's
Speaker 1: constantly counting down what you're doing. This is another negative
Speaker 1: aspect of the work conditions I've been seeing in reports
Speaker 1: from people who have worked at the Amazon warehouses the
Speaker 1: creeping dystopia of only communicating with managers through apps, having
Speaker 1: your productivity timed by robots in the warehouse, and being
Speaker 1: constantly monitored right now during COVID especially, it's not conducive
Speaker 1: to mental health if you're isolated at work, watched over
Speaker 1: by robots, and only spoken to by your managers through
Speaker 1: a phone screen. However, Amazon insists in productive. It's the
Speaker 1: above all. The other thing I noticed almost right away was, um,
Speaker 1: this is a trillion dollar company, right, Like, they have
Speaker 1: unlimited money to spend on whatever they want. Six times
Speaker 1: the injury rate of the national average for the industry
Speaker 1: that they're in, you know in Washington State. Uh, Amazon
Speaker 1: is now ranked is more dangerous a job to work
Speaker 1: at one of their fcs than mechanized logging or law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Because it's just like, their injury rate is so high. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's because there's no incentives in there to actually
Speaker 1: um like, for safety, it's all about speed so everything
Speaker 1: also than all this material. Basically, they don't have enough
Speaker 1: tools through the job consistently, so never enough hand scanners,
Speaker 1: never enough radio is never enough palette jacks. Never enough,
Speaker 1: gay lord, it's never enough of like the basic materials
Speaker 1: you need to do your jobs. You're scrambling from Florida
Speaker 1: FLOORA trying to hunt down the basic equipment. UM. Also,
Speaker 1: every time you open up a hand scanner, every time
Speaker 1: you to interact with the computer screen, not every single time,
Speaker 1: but like at least three or four times during your shift,
Speaker 1: your UM to go to actually access or use that material,
Speaker 1: you have to answer a survey. So surveys like tell
Speaker 1: me about your manager, tell me about your co workers,
Speaker 1: how are the bathrooms are they open? Um? How would
Speaker 1: you you know? How is everybody maintaining social distancing? That
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, And so it was really just kind
Speaker 1: of a very dystopian, um funked up place to work
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. But this is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just amazingly how just to humanizing and how disconnected from
Speaker 1: the workforce the actual company and the messaging is constantly
Speaker 1: basically there's the there's a service messaging, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like, oh, yes, we value customers, we value what
Speaker 1: we're doing, and we're a great company, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But the underlying message constantly is you are completely disposable.
Speaker 1: You're the part of the equation that we're going to
Speaker 1: use up and throw away. And um, here on this
Speaker 1: app if you want to quit, you can put anytime.
Speaker 1: Here's the button to quit, like like you know, we um,
Speaker 1: we hate to see you go, but there's the door
Speaker 1: as fast as you'd like to get out. Which I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of by them in the ASP as
Speaker 1: they're having trouble recruiting now because they've burned through so
Speaker 1: many people. Considering all that, how do you feel when,
Speaker 1: for example, Bezos said in an interview, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not true that there's any problem with the working conditions.
Speaker 1: Are working conditions are find that sort of thing? Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: when basics and stuff like that, I think that's basically
Speaker 1: him blowing smoke up his investors asses. Um uh, you
Speaker 1: know the working conditions. Certainly there are places within Amazon,
Speaker 1: and I'm certainly there's people with an Amazon that probably
Speaker 1: do okay where they're at, whether they're whether the hours
Speaker 1: aren't crazy, whatever else. I haven't met those people necessarily,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure they exist somewhere, right. But because it's
Speaker 1: a big company. And that said, the majority of conditions
Speaker 1: I see when I talk to drivers, when I talk
Speaker 1: to people who work in the scs, when I talk
Speaker 1: to people who work in the flex delivery sites, overall
Speaker 1: conditions are not good. So we've heard it here in
Speaker 1: this episode. Many examples of unfair, unsanitary, and even dangerous
Speaker 1: working conditions inside Amazon warehouses from the UK to the US.
Speaker 1: This is not a rumor. It's not bitter workers kicking
Speaker 1: up of us for no reason. It's not people expecting
Speaker 1: the world for their warehouse job. It's just normal workers
Speaker 1: wanting a bit of dignity whilst they worked their asses
Speaker 1: off for Amazon, which, let's remind ourselves again, is one
Speaker 1: of the most profitable corporations on Earth. They reported a
Speaker 1: net income of more than twenty one billion US dollars.
Speaker 1: The net profits sowed by eight one this year, with
Speaker 1: sales hitting the three hundred and eighties six billion US dollars.
Speaker 1: Surely Bazos can stop going to the moon for two
Speaker 1: minutes and do something to improve the conditions in the
Speaker 1: warehouses for the people that helped him make this much money.
Speaker 1: Next episode, we'll find out what happened when Amazon warehouse
Speaker 1: workers tried to unionize in a bid to improve the situation. Themselves.
Speaker 1: This has been Megacorp. Megacorp is made by my production
Speaker 1: company H eleven for Cool Zone Media. It's written, researched
Speaker 1: and produced by myself, Jake Hanrahan. It was also produced
Speaker 1: by Sophie Lichtman. Music is by some Black, graphics by
Speaker 1: Adam Doyle and sound engineering by Splicing Block. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch, follow me on social media
Speaker 1: at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h A N A h
Speaker 1: A n