UK Amazon Staff Being Mistreated?

Holiday staff at Amazon UK have accused their employers of treating them "harshly."

According to this article in the Times, your average Amazon UK employee only gets two short breaks during an eight hour shift. While the Christmas temps are only getting paid £6.50 ($10) an hour, they have to pay their own transport fees of £8.50 ($13) a day, and they have to work seven-day weeks.

Those poor suffering tykes allegedly have to walk up to 14 miles, and make "ridiculous" packing quotas.

Amazon failed to dispute the allegations, with the VP of European Operations, Allan Lyall, saying, "Every single member of the Amazon.co.uk workforce... is currently working flat out to ensure that our millions of customers receive the products that they have ordered on time this Christmas. Our number-one focus is our customers and everyone at Amazon works hard on their behalf."

Patty Smith (US spokeswoman) has said, however, that "There were many inaccuracies in the UK article. Case in point: We don't allow [fulfillment center] associates to work more than six days a week in any location - they must have at least one day off."

Personally, I'd like to invite any "hard done by" Amazon staff to work in any of the retail game shops or supermarkets, and then see if they want to beg for their old job back.

Source: ZDNet

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Meh, lazy buggers. I'd be grateful for the hours. I'm now going to be doing all my Christmas shopping with amazon.co.uk, just to make sure those guys don't get bored.

The_root_of_all_evil:

Personally, I'd like to invite any "hard done by" Amazon staff to work in any of the retail game shops or supermarkets, and then see if they want to beg for their old job back.

This. Considering that I know people who have to work through their breaks and work seven days a week, I'm not overwhelmed with sympathy for them.

In my neck of the woods, the only additional privilege they'd be owed is a half-hour lunch... that'd be unpaid. There'd also generally be two consecutive days off in every seven-day period, but that could be (and often is around this season) waived by the employee to earn overtime.

And I don't know of too many hourly positions that pay for transportation unless employees are being hauled off to some location in the remote hinterlands or at sea.

Po', po' pitiful me.

-- Steve

Bag groceries you spoiled pricks.

8 hours with two short breaks and £6.50 an hour.

Boo fekking hoo.
£6.50 for a temp is very good. I'm pretty certain I've had worse jobs for less pay, hurry up and send me my cd's you unreasonable dicks!

So... as long as someone else has it worse, it makes any complaints null and void?

Surely is you get a packing job in a warehouse for a company like Amazon, you should expect them to be busy over the Christmas period. It's not like the concept of people buying more gifts & products at Christmas was only introduced this year.

One of the staff interview in that article said they were in "agony" after packing X-box's on their shift. But surely if they were lifting them correctly, according to the Health & Safety guidelines, then they wouldn't have hurt themselves?

It seems to me that if you get job in a packing warehouse you can be expected to do some heavy lifting and walking, if you're not physically up to the task then maybe you shouldn't have applied for the job in the first place.

I also don't have much sympathy for the people who are complaining they're "made" to work 7 day shifts, since in this time of recession & job losses they should be grateful for the extra hours, they're getting paid for them after all.
If they really need some time off they can use one of their 6 penalty points, I mean 6 days off over a temporary Christmas period job is quite a lot really.

How short are short breaks? Cause if you don't work over 6 hrs and 30 mins where I am, you only get one 15 min break.

Admittedly where I work, Harris Teeter, is a high end store and we get treated well. $7.50 an hr, 15 min break for over 3 hours and 30 mins and a 45 min break for over 6 hrs and 30 mins. After 3 months we also get a retirement plan and a few benefits. Course, i'm a part timer, not a temp.

Weak dollar aside, I'm glad I live in Australia. When I'm not throwing some prawns on the barbie, flushing spiders and snakes out of my swag or punching kangaroos, I'm enjoying a low-level tech position that pays ridiculously well and only required a short stint in a sweatshop-style callcentre to get it.

Don't like it form a union. It worked for the miners!