Washington:
E-commerce giant Amazon has apologized to a US lawmaker just after falsely denying that some of its drivers are forced at instances to urinate in plastic bottles.
The flap began final week with a tweet from Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Wisconsin.
“Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles,” Pocan tweeted, in an apparent reference to Amazon’s opposition to efforts to unionize a key facility in Alabama.
Amazon’s official account immediately responded, saying: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”
But quite a few news media then cited various Amazon personnel who stated they had, in reality, been left with small option but to use plastic bottles.
And the web page The Intercept stated it had obtained internal documents displaying Amazon executives have been conscious of the practice.
The workers’ testimony underlined the complaints of numerous Amazon personnel — each in its processing facilities and amongst its drivers — about what they say is a relentless work pace.
“We owe an apology to Representative Pocan,” Amazon stated in a statement late Friday.
“The tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers,” every of which, it stated, had dozens of restrooms that personnel could use “at any time.”
Amazon continued: “We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed.”
It described the dilemma as “a long-standing, industry-wide issue,” adding, “we would like to solve it.”
The apology did not satisfy Pocan, who responded Saturday on Twitter, saying:
“Sigh. This is not about me, this is about your workers – who you don’t treat with enough respect or dignity.
“Start by acknowledging the inadequate working circumstances you have developed for ALL your workers, then repair that for every person & ultimately, let them unionize with no interference.”
Workers at Amazon’s big processing facility in Bessemer, Alabama completed a vote Monday on no matter whether to unionize — an initiative strongly resisted by the enterprise. The outcome has not however been announced.
Amazon has effectively fended off unionization efforts elsewhere in the US, although most of its facilities in Europe are unionized.
The enterprise insists its workers delight in fantastic spend and advantages by US requirements.
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