Amazon Referred to as Out for Denying That Employees Pee in Bottles

It may not have been a seem public-relations method for a company regarded for its grueling doing the job situations and regular allegations of labor violations to deny one particular of the a lot more unforgettable claims to arise from its warehouses. But Amazon went for it in any case this 7 days, when a person of its official accounts tweeted a denial of the reporting that its drivers and success-middle workers have been pressured to pee in bottles in buy to help save time to fulfill quotas established by their administrators.

“You do not truly feel the peeing in bottles point, do you?” tweeted the company’s Amazon Information account. “If that had been correct, nobody would perform for us.” The denial was in reaction to an trade in between Wisconsin agent Marc Pocan and Amazon senior vice-president Dave Clark, who claimed he welcomed Bernie Sanders’s vacation supporting Amazon workers’ union travel in Alabama. Right after Clark claimed that his organization — recognized for its union-busting methods and weak COVID protections for employees — is the “Bernie Sanders of businesses,” the Democratic congressman pushed back, saying that having to pay personnel $15 an hour “doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make employees urinate in water bottles.”

On issuing the denial, the corporation was promptly designed to odor the proof, as many reporters masking labor circumstances in Amazon warehouses shared their reporting on the exercise:

The most productive case in point of this pattern arrived from the Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein, who posted paperwork proving that workforce peeing in bottles was so commonplace that the $1 trillion firm “frequently referenced it throughout meetings and in official policy paperwork and e-mail.” 1 document from a Pittsburgh facility described infractions by Amazon staff members, which integrated “public urination.” One more included an email from the exact facility in which a logistics manager wrote in May well: “We have an understanding of that DA’s [driver associates] might have emergencies though on-highway, and primarily throughout COVID, DAs have struggled to come across bogs though offering.”

If the tweet was intended to categorical neutrality amid the unionization generate in Alabama — which could results in in excess of 5,000 warehouse staff getting to be the initial unionized members of Amazon’s labor drive of 800,000 — the Intercept report only made the predicament messier. In the e-mail furnished by the Pittsburgh employee, the supervisor also scolded motorists for pooping in luggage in the course of their shifts: “This evening, an associate identified human feces in an Amazon bag that was returned to station by a driver. This is the 3rd celebration in the last two months when bags have been returned to station with poop within.”