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?

Rhino read my post properly I said I have yet to discover the joys of internet shopping.

Your statement "you all shop at Amazon" shows that you are looking at all of us on this thread as one big homogenous mass. Much in the same way you are looking at the Amazon workers. Very telling.

Poor wee lamb with blisters. The premise of the broadcast was that Amazon are evil employers, That talented employees like the undercover reporter are above manual/menial/physically hard work, and that if a large employer has rules and you break them yo should resign and go on the dole. Then we would get some grafters, probably Eastern European to pay for the work shy to relax on benefits till a suitable job comes up. I felt sorry for the book shop owner and would try and purchase from him - but this is just the reality of our economy. Poor and biased reporting/editing!

SEmy arse if you delivered to my home with a vomiting bug to my immunity compromised DH neither he or i would be very happy. Irresponsiblity like that spreads bugs and makes the jobs of some of the NHS workers on this thread even harder.

And if you are doing 12 hours with no break which is illegal i assume this is all logged on your tacograph.

And what if you paased out at the wheel from being ill or tired. Absolutely appalled at your post.

This is another case of 'racing to the bottom'. We should be expecting better working conditions not being blasé when someone is having to work in poor conditions.

I'm not a fan of 'everything else is shit so why shouldn't this be', but this programme left me cold.

None of the issues bought up were things that don't go on quite legally in hundreds of other workplaces. Concentrating it on Amazon or in fact any one company does absolutely bugger all to engage the wider population and mobilise change.

Working to targets, sickness being a disciplinary offence, zero hour contracts and abuse of temporary contracts etc. These are very standard things that have gone on everywhere I've worked for the last 15 years. I have massive issues with the way some companies are run, but also understand that companies need value for money, they're not there to mother their employees, they pay them to do a job. It's compromise that's needed and documentaries that just look like whining do bugger all to change it.

I was frankly amazed that complaints of hearing the 'beep' of the scanner when trying to sleep and that it was a brain numbing job that treated people like robots were treated as seriously as the fact that they were clearly being asked to work to unrealistic targets and such low sickness thresholds for disciplinary. I mean come on - it's a warehouse picking job of course you're going to be just getting on with it, not changing the fricking world.

Pick your bloody battles, if the targets are un-achievable then that's something to get worked up over when people are losing jobs over them.

It was a crap piece of programming that did nothing but distract from what the problems in the workplace actually are in a lot of places.

Book depository is owned by Amazon to person saying they prefer them...

The way my Twitter feed exploded last night I was expecting absolute horrors to be unleashed when I caught up on it earlier... no. Ten hour shift is reasonable with an hour break and paid £8 odd on a night. Not 10p an hour to work 80 hour weeks as other companies do in third world countries. So he has to walk constantly, as do a lot of workers-postmen in the rain and snow, NHS staff, police and so on. The bit where he grumbled about the beeping made me chuckle tbh. And he was late to work three times over a short period so he got 1.5 points which to me, seems fair.

The only thing that got to me was the fact they're not allowed time off sick, that bit didn't even make sense. How can anyone be effective at work whilst vomiting and spreading it to other staff?

Other than that it just seemed to be trying to shit on Amazon tbh. I feel suspicious about it all. Last year before Christmas it was the tax scandal and now this. Right before peak time for sales. What did they do wrong to the authorities high up that clearly want them to disappear? Honestly, that's how it feels. I really doubt it's going to affect their sales. It wasn't that bad.

hyena said "Not 10p an hour to work 80 hour weeks as other companies do in third world countries."

Why the fuck is this comparison even being made? This is what people mean when they talk about a race to the bottom.

We should be talking about how to RAISE working conditions in all parts of the world not aiming to push them DOWN to third world level. Like i said upthread you wouldnt tell a woman who was being emotionally/financially abused by her husband to think herself lucky because the woman down the road is being physically abused by hers so "at least you aint being hit love so think yourself lucky."

Because thats the principle being used to justify these practices!

I work antisocial hours - am preparing for a couple of nightshifts tonight. in 9.5 hours I will get 15 min paid breach and then 30 min unpaid 'lunch' at 5am

I work in a high volume call centre, emergency services, people often distressed in pain. I have targets, 7 mins average call time - my 'stats' are always there and reviewed monthly, more than 3 days sick and I am given a warning and told not allowed to be sick again for a year. am not allowed to deviate from the process for good reason ie: pt safety. Yes this is the good old NHS.

I don't think the actual job at Amazon is bad. I do think they should get shift allowance for nightshift/weekends. I get almost double pay for nights/sundays and am always on enhanced pay sats and evenings. It sort of makes up for the time you miss with your childre, the exhaustion of nightshift, chronic physical and mental health problems that can come about as a result of disrupted sleep patterns.

Is there a union there? Why isn't it negotiating?

They are allowed time of sick but they're scored on it and it triggers a disciplinary when they reach 2 points (1 point for being off and half for going home sick from shift), it's not an automatic sacking but will get you a talking to and you'll be watched closely for a certain period of time.

My workplace (NHS) has a similar system and so have most of the places I've worked.

Actually, thinking about it the sickness system wasn't really explained. Do you get a point per episode of sickness or per shift? The fact it wasn't explained makes me think it's per episode and tbh it's only just a bit more strict than the NHS scoring model.

Any workplace can use your sickness history to review your capability or to score for redundancy, with the no rights for 2 years ruling it's a perfectly acceptable reason to terminate someones contract. Let's face it most workplaces have someone who seems to have Monday-Morningistis and this is seen as a way to control that.

That's my point exactly though, instead of looking at it as a wider issue it's minimised it to look like preciousness.

Our union has negotiated for many things for us and is currently looking at shift patterns.

Why oh why don't people join unions?

Ubik1 - completely off topic and of course anecdotal but I left my union recently as the rep I had for a recent consultation was openly friends with a manager who has repeatedly tried to push through changes with HR onside that she has no issue admitting that it was been done 'outside the proper channels', and when this has been raised with the Union regional office it's been met with a shrug.

There have been other issues that aren't really mine to share, but go no way to reassuring me that my experience was a one off.

I'm sure there are great representatives out there, but ime it's very much luck of the draw and not something I could ever bring myself to put much faith in again after witnessing so much plain incompetence and ladder climbing.

I always prided myself in being aware enough to know that HR and management are there to protect the company/organisation, but very naively didn't realise precisely how much some reps are out to network for themselves.

German trade Unions are negotiating.
Why aren't British?

NY Times article about Amazon in Germany says:

More recently, a firm that provides temporary employees for Amazon warehouses is defending itself in a class-action suit that claims the firm shortchanged workers on pay as they waited in security lines to exit warehouses.

The union, though, credits the strikes for recent improvements to overtime scheduling, an increase in the number of break rooms and a pledge by Amazon to pay Christmas bonuses, a standard practice in German industry.

There are some very harsh comments on here that make me look like a positive Marxist.

Will be taking my (considerable) book buying elsewhere!

i dont bother with panorama. it is always a bit something out of nothing lies

and my DS was about 3 days old, or less even, when the midwife came round and asked, in her panicky voice, Did you see Panorama, You MUST make sure you have a new mattress.

bad news for a new mum. when i had in fact a new mattress.

it is the daily mail of television