Panorama - Amazon.....

[AtYourCervix]

Chap gets a job in a vast warehouse. Is surprised when he walks miles.

Chap gets an hour break in a 10 hour shift.

The bing bong electric noises irritate him.

Chap is late starting 3 times in a week then nleats because he is disciplined.

He has targets.

So what?

I disagree. Unskilled work isn't valued highly because there are too many people that want/need to do it.

There are too many people in the country for there to ever be a shortage of this type of labour, and as long as that is the case, pay and conditions won't improve.

When I worked in a factory we worked 12 hour shifts in pretty intense heat, walked miles and had 3 20 minute breaks. I lost over a stone in a few months, best job I ever had :-).

This thread is like the 4 Yorkshire men sketch by Monty Python

It's not just unskilled people though, is it?
There are health professionals in similar shitty work conditions! And because there is apathy about improving their lot they're spiteful about conditions of people they deem 'below' them....

It's happening right through the work market. Labour has become so devalued that apart from the extremes awful conditions are normalised.

Yes people should work. But have proper breaks, be paid should they have to 'cash up' at the end of their shifts, not have arbitrary computer generated times to execute tasks (dotcom grocery deliveries are notorious for this and it has caused workplace accidents that I know of).

But no. That would cost the fatcats money and that'd never do, would it?

Oh and workfare has further devalued the labour market. Another reason businesses should be banned from participating.

Well said Gobby

Seconded Gobby.

Second well said gobby, I am a nurse and worked 10 years in ICU, which is incredibly stressful, nurses we work the most stupid unsocial hours, could never get my head round why nurses can't be on a set shift system... But hay ho?
We get treated like shit by management, patients, relatives, visitors, press and government... But equally we get I think a fair wage for a pubic service job, use of our brains, our time pressure is saving a life or not as the case maybe, but that is why we do it, and when we win it is fantastic and when we don't we know we did the best we could do.
But it isn't a constant every minute of every day.
I know work in Occupational Health and I pride myself on making myself work in some of the manual jobs I will be advising on... I have the luxury of calling it a day after 3 or 4 hours, I only once stuck a job all day and quit frankly it was not only physically draining, it drained me
As in my brain only had to concentrate on the number of units I was producing and how far I was behind target, no use of my brain other than that ... To be honest I didn't take that day home with me like I did in ICU, but my god, the next day I did not want to go to the next department, I derived no satisfaction at all from it.

Agreed with Gobby. Just because someone's replaceable, that shouldn't be carte blanche to treat them however you fancy because there's plenty more out there waiting.

Horrific job - dreadful way to treat people essentially ensuring failure for everyone on every shift ! You hit the target and the target goes up !

A lot of people working in the NHS have commented here and we all know that staff from top to bottom in the NHS work extremely hard (no one would argue) but it's a job with decision making, responsibility, human contact and a range of rewards which exceed the financial. I don't see it as comparable.

The unions are RIGHT to ask questions of Amazon and I hate the idea that people are having to work in this kind of environment (walking eleven miles during a 10 hour shift pushing a trolley which gets heavier the longer you go on...)
Being sick is a disciplinary offence?

Being sick is an OFFENCE ?

This is a leftover from the worst excesses of Thatcherism - i.e. if there is always spare capacity in the labour market then business will always be able to operate at low cost. It's true - but horrific.
To WooWooOwl The notion that there are "too many" people in the country who will except low pay and bad conditions is ludicrous and naive, you may as well say "no point providing maternity care (or IVF) because so many kids will be born anyway". Let them eat cake...

The minimum wage was a step in the right direction, the working time practices are a good idea - so why was the BBC "guinea pig" allowed to work way beyond what the law allows for less than the minimum wage?

Is this REALLY what we say is OK in 21st century Britain?

Doesn't the "coal face" of the digital revolution remind anyone of the industrial one ?

I'm with Paul Kenny, I'm with the notion of progress and change but not at any cost.

Will NOT be shopping with Amazon anymore.

Well said MiniMonty

Not much empathy on this thread.
It its a job, and like many others, it its hard work.
The problem is that Amazon treats its staff poorly.
Did you know they have to work extra hours ie. 11 hour shifts and extra days in the run up to xmas without any overtime rate? They get half hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks which, in the vast centre, is just enough tine to go to the bathroom.
Amazon recently changed it shift patterns...this means that people who previously worked for years on day shifts were told that they would have to work nights....and that they has to work wed, thur, Fri and sat night every single week. Now that's fair enough if that's the job you took on but these people had previously only ever worked eight hour day shifts during the week. Oh and no pay rise or shift allowance...for the same money.
Its not that crappiest job perhaps bit lets not pretend that Amazon is an honourable employer that cares about staff.
Its not the crrhaps but lets not pretend Amazon that

Loads of companies do that pinkr.
My Mum worked the same hours 9-12.30 or 2.00 for nearly 13 years for a company that promotes it's ethics, uses fair trade etc.
Then all of a sudden she has to work any hours from 5.00am until midnight, she has no shift pattern and gets 2 shifts of 2 hours 15 mins one early morning and one late at night on the same day. She is expected to work over even though her boss clocks her off so she doesn't get paid for it.
Her shifts can be changed at 15 minutes notice but she has to give 4 weeks notice to change it herself however you can't give 4 weeks notice as the rota is only arranged a week in advance.
She was allowed to have the same day off every week as she was caring for an elderly relative. When he died she was put in to work that day just 2 days after his death with no consultation.
She has had to sign a contract to say she will be sacked if she says anything online that shows the company in a bad light.

To WooWooOwl The notion that there are "too many" people in the country who will except low pay and bad conditions is ludicrous and naive, you may as well say "no point providing maternity care (or IVF) because so many kids will be born anyway". Let them eat cake...

It's the way it is though isn't it?

I'm not saying I don't care about people who are having to work shitty jobs with shit pay and conditions, but what amazon are doing is completely legal. And as long as there is always a huge surplus of people willing to do the work, then they have no incentive to change.

Gobby I take your point that it's not just unskilled workers that have to deal with low pay and conditions, but if you raise those things for the people at the bottom of the pay scale than those slightly above will demand more too, and on it will go, until prices rise and the company is no longer as profitable as it once was.

I don't believe that labourers would be in this position if they weren't so easily replaceable, because companies like amazon would know that they have to improve things for their lowest paid workers or they'd lose them, and then be unable to function.

Again, I'm not saying that this is the way it should be, I'm just saying that this is how the situation is the way I see it.

The situation a pp mentioned about those who work in retail not being allowed to go until after they have done the cashing up, which isn't allowed to happen until after a shift ends is particularly outrageous in my mind.

The problem is people don't join unions anymore. Collective bargaining is the only effective way to even up the power imbalance between employer and employee, and the unions are so ineffectual now they don't have much clout politically, either, so there's not the incentive to legislate to protect the lowest paid.

Zero hours contracts should be restricted to genuinely seasonal workers. It's appalling that they can be abused as a means of depriving almost all employment rights from the most vulnerable. There's no mutuality of obligations - it's all just take from the employer. And "apprenticeship" contracts in areas such as shopwork should be banned, too, because by definition it's a low skill area (though very dependent on reliability and social skills - just not trainable ones) so it's a transparent ruse to avoid paying legitimate rates.

if you raise those things for the people at the bottom of the pay scale than those slightly above will demand more too, and on it will go, until prices rise and the company is no longer as profitable as it once was.

I just googled "pay gap highest lowest earners UK" and a link from the Daily Mail - that bastion of Marxist thought - cropped up with a headline indicating the opposite is in fact happening. Surely that is a morally unjustifiable trend which very much needs to be redressed? And that it appears we all managed perfectly well in the past when the gap was far narrower? In actuality it isn't the wage bill that's the issue; it's the division of that bill amongst the workforce. If there's only so much money to go around before shareholders start to object, why is it always the poorest whose wages are trimmed? Nobody is irreplaceable, but without union representation/power, those at the top can allocate wages however they choose. And how they choose is predictable.

I remember when British Gas was nationalised, and the head was suddenly paid one of the first truly enormous salaries. He went on Radio 4 to defend it, and insisted that you had to pay leaders of industry these salaries or they'd just go overseas to work instead - that if you paid peanuts, you'd get monkeys. And my childhood self sat there thinking, but you were doing the job on massively less money before, so by your own argument you're not up to it and they need to employ someone else, because you must be a monkey if you accepted the lower pay levels all this time... it's all cobblers. There will always be competent enough people eagerly willing to work for large salaries, even if they aren't lottery winning sized. The idea there's this tiny pool of individuals capable of it is risible.

I can't believe how harsh people are being on here! Yes people in other jobs have to work hard too but loads of you have quoted NHS work - if you're working hard as a nurse etc you're working hard because the NHS is horribly stretched and the work you're doing is helping people that really need it. Rushing around an Amazon factory piling on stress is serving only to line the pockets of the people making money from you. With a 65 billion dollar turnover do you not think Amazon could afford to employ more people??

There is no reason to treat humans as robots. I saw no empathy from the managers (or whatever those timekeepers on the computers were), no sense of recognition of the workers as people at all! I work in a target driven industry and I was utterly depressed at the way these people were treated. But I'm more depressed by the amount of people on here saying it's fine and if they don't like it they should leave. Leave? Why should they?! Is it really that outrageous of them to ask for decent working conditions where you're not being chased by a beeping machine for 10-12 hours a day that it appears can't possibly be kept up with? We would have no workers' rights if everyone took this attitude.

May be there is something you can join so your rights are protected?

What a complete waste of licence fee money.
Yes he worked hard, but so do millions of others. I always feel sorry for people working on production lines but panorama decide to target Amazon.. FFS.

Amazon can't win. If the puckers didn't have targets then customers orders would be delayed. If they employed more people then prices would go up... You all shop at amazon because they are the cheapest, can't have it all.

Not all products sold on Amazon come from their warehouse - lots of small Companies sell on their and have their own shipping arrangements.

see there with their products (arghh!!) no edit button

I don't want decision making,responsibility and human contact. If I llved near a distribution centre, I'd apply today.

At present work as a delivery driver, have to average 1 drop every 3 minutes to make any money. I LOVE the challenge of that, and no I don't drive like a loon. Streamlining the route, getting to know customers, workplaces, family, safe places, looking at my route and challenging myself to be in such a location at noon etc. I can easily keep that up for 12 hours, no break, not even wanting a break because I'm absolutely buzzing. Only pain is no toilets! I do this 6 days a week.

The only reasons I'm looking for a new job at the moment is because the poxy delivery company aren't getting the lorry to me till 11am, which is ridiculous just before christmas and clearly I can't do 12 hour days from then. Also, a single day off sick, unless I can get someone else to do it, I lose my job. I've been known to deliver with a vomiting bug, just throwing up between drops, which is revolting and irresponsible, but what can I do?

I hope I don't sound like a twat, but I'd happily work there if they opened a warehouse locally. Lots of walking, not having to get drawn into crappy banter and gossip because you have to keep busy, it sounds right up my street especially if they'd let me listen to music at the same time.

The 'chap' should try nursing.