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posted by martyb on Thursday May 10 2018, @11:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the Chaplin's-"Metropolis" dept.

The World Socialist Web Site reports

Injured Amazon worker Shannon Allen spoke to the International Amazon Workers Voice about the conditions at the DFW-7 fulfillment center in Haslet, Texas. Shannon described brutal working conditions, authoritarian-style surveillance of workers, and management demands to maintain frenetic rates of speed.

Shannon, 49, lives in Azle, Texas, a small town on the western outskirts of Fort Worth. She was injured while working at Amazon, returned to the job, and was injured again at the same workstation. Physically unable to continue work, Shannon now faces homelessness on top of her injuries, but she is determined to "fight or die".

[...] To maximize her income, Shannon volunteered for the overnight shift on Saturday through Thursday. The shift begins at 6:30 at night and ends at 5:00 in the morning. However, once Shannon received her first paycheck, she realized that her pay was $13 per hour for the weekend shifts, not the $13.50 that had been promised.

[...] Shannon worked as a "counter", whose job was to check the work of the pickers and stowers. Fail to catch a mistake, and become a target of a punitive system of "quality errors" and "write-ups".

Not long after starting to work at Amazon, Shannon began to recognize what she called the "dirty secrets". "These are the things they don't tell you about when you're hired."

Every time workers leave the facility, they are subjected to an invasive search. "You wait in line with a bucket like at the airport", she said. A worker is required to take off belt, shoes, and hat. Bags are sent through a conveyor belt and the worker goes through a full body scan. "If you set it off, you have to go through a second search, and they wand you front to back."

In a 10-hour shift, workers are permitted two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute break for lunch. To go outside on a break, workers must submit to the search and go through the security line. "The lines to get outside on your 15-minute break are 20 to 30 deep on each line, and there are only two lines." Meanwhile, the breaks are timed from "scan to scan" at a worker's station, and workers are admonished, "Not one second more."

[...] "The heat is sweltering." Shannon described fans here and there, pointing down the aisles where workers walk to get to their stations, but not toward the workers to help them cool off. "Whoever thought of that design was a complete idiot", Shannon said. "Because we get no relief from the heat with them pointed down the aisle."

Temperatures reached 80, 85, and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. "In the summertime, it gets over 100 degrees in there", Shannon said. "Here is another genius idea. They have these signs hanging down that have our station numbers on them. These signs are probably as big as a 19-inch TV. They are in front of the fans and it blows the sign constantly. And we get no relief from the heat."

"July and August are the absolute worst", Shannon continued. "It was nothing to see an ambulance up at Amazon four to five times a night." Workers dropped at their stations, physically unable to continue working. "On my shift", Shannon said, "we were picking people up from heat exhaustion."

[...] In addition to having "expectations of the human body that are unrealistic", Shannon said the company expected workers to manage with faulty equipment and constant demands to meet strict time limits. Attempting to work at high speeds around faulty equipment was a common cause of injury.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2018, @06:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2018, @06:15PM (#678033)

    The thing is, Americans use metric where it matters.
    For science, medicine, electrical devices, international trade, treaties, what have you.
    It seems to make some foreigners mad merely to read American units in a story that takes place in America. It must be because they can't instantly grok it so they take it out on the entire nation in the comments. Jesus, if you care, Google will give you the converted answer.