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Amazon drivers “work illegal hours”
- rblatz 10y agoThis seems to be a common trend among tech companies. Misclassify employees,pay them a less than is legal, design the program to force them violate a bunch of laws, all the while telling them not to violate laws. Then claim you can't control them because they are contractors. Maybe when you get caught pay a token fine admit no wrong doing and reclassify the employees or shut the thing down.
- moyta 10y agoNah, you don't see Uber or Lyft contractors having 15% to 30% of their hours driving go completely unpaid. They do mis-classify employees as contractors, but they don't go quite as far as Amazon and many other employers doing wage theft. We should be enforcing our laws that make wage theft a felony, but at least in the US there is minimal funding for enforcement, so only small businesses are policed. Jeff Bezos can keep committing felonies and forcing those below him to do the same due to the lack of enforcement.
- pimlottc 10y agoActually, Uber and Lyft contractors are not paid for quite a bit of their working hours. If you don't have a passenger in your car, you're not getting paid. That includes time between passengers as well as however long it takes you to reach the pickup location. That can easily be 15-30% or more.
- moyta 10y agoTrue true, I didn't say the model wasn't messed up and that practically the same effect didn't occur, but my comment was primarily on the overt wage theft at Amazon, versus the hidden wage theft that occurs as a contractor at Uber & Lyft. The equivalent there is if you just didn't get paid for quite a few rides at all.
- TheGrumpyBrit 10y agoThat is at least consistent with any other taxi/private hire service though, at least in the UK. I'm not aware of any taxi firms that operate on a standard hourly wage. Drivers pay a fee to the base to be registered with them, and in some cases a fee for each fare they are allocated, but the drivers themselves are self employed and the fares they collect are their own. The only difference with Uber is that Uber process the fares for them rather than the driver collecting cash.
- nameisu 10y agoI am a automotive tech worker. i dont know how a lawyer determines h1b minimum wage but i get paid a lot less than Americans in my company who dont even have a masters degree. Yes its very easy to trick the laws
- jedmeyers 10y agoDoes one really have to have a masters degree to be a automotive tech? In any case at least you can change employers with reasonable ease, not like the workers on L1 visa who can either put up or pack the bags and go home.
- nameisu 10y agoi should have said automotive engineering
- ZoF 10y agoYep, 'tech' has negative connotations here for future reference. Or at very least, unskilled/uneducated connotations; which generally speaking are negative. The underlying reasoning is something akin to "if he was an engineer he wouldn't call himself a 'tech'"
- moyta 10y agoTalk to your state's Dept of Labor and Industry. Your state has a hotline for you to anonymously ask if what your employer is doing is legal, and if your employer has other H1B visa holders, you can likely stay anonymous during their investigation. They won't move fast, but triple damages and a nice fine for your employer can be a sweet reward for their fraud against you. On a sidenote, the H1B strategy is very common in the Engineering field, most consultancies figure they can get a decade of work at below American wages out of the average H1B visa holder, saving them a few hundred thousand.
- hiou 10y agoIt's not just tech companies. The whole shielding responsibility via contractors is basically the name of the game for any large corporation. One quick example is chicken farming. This article was about a lawsuit about chicken waste in 2010 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030202408.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03... The relevant quote from the article is a statement from Perdue Chicken "Perdue owns no factory farms," the company said. "Families that raise poultry for Perdue are independent farmers."
- woobar 10y agoIt's even better. Perdue doesn't own farms, but they own chickens that independent farmers grow for them. John Oliver had a segment about this last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9wHzt6gBgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9wHzt6gBgI
- moyta 10y agoIs this news? They do this right in their hometown, wage theft by Amazon is an institution. They "ask" employees to come in an hour or two early for a shift, and stay a few hours late. Unless the BBC is trying to organize Amazon workers to hit the streets and fight for better working conditions and/or a union, this isn't newsworthy or noteworthy.
- pyromine 10y agoTo be honest, how does Amazon attract talent despite a pretty universal reputation of being a horrible place to work. I'd rather work for Microsoft or big blue than Amazon any day.
- moyta 10y agoAt least here in the states, workers rights are very poor, and Amazon will hire nearly anyone. I know that they were only offering homeless in Seattle & Bellevue nigh shift hours as a temp employee, which meant they could not live in a shelter or rehab since they would start work a few hours after the curfew. Really a great helping hand Jeff, throwin' em to the wolves!
- TheGrumpyBrit 10y agoThat's one way to look at it, but for context, what other firms were offering work to the homeless?
- moyta 10y agoQuite a few others, to the point that they put on a job fair: http://kuow.org/post/amazon-hires-homeless-workers-and-everyone-ends-disappointed http://kuow.org/post/amazon-hires-homeless-workers-and-every...
- plandis 10y agoAmazon also has some undeveloped land that they have turned over to an organization that runs homeless shelters to provide housing for the years in between when the land is developed. But yes. Amazon is a terrible place to work and we are all just too dumb to quit. Oh, and we all hate homeless people, I guess.
- 0xmohit 10y agoSome highlights: Drivers for agencies contracted by the internet giant told an undercover reporter they were expected to deliver up to 200 parcels a day. Amazon Logistics requires agency drivers to be self-employed, and therefore not entitled to the minimum wage or employment rights like sick pay or holiday pay. Tonia Novitz, professor of labour law at Bristol University, said in her opinion drivers contracted by AHC should not be classed as self-employed, because they do not determine their own routes, days of work or rest periods. In a statement Amazon said: "As independent contractors of our delivery providers, drivers deliver at their own pace, take breaks at their discretion, and are able to choose the suggestion route or develop their own." It seems so easy to get away with anything.
- moyta 10y agoWhen there is no serious labor movement, and enforcement of labor laws is weak, employers can do practically anything they want.
- tn13 10y agoThat is load of BS. The driver can always resign and join something else. A lot of coders work more than 8 hours a day big deal.
- ajmurmann 10y agoIf a coder falls asleep at the keyboard nobody else gets harmed in the vast majority of cases. Coders also have a much wider range of jobs to pick from.
- enraged_camel 10y agoI'm sorry but just because someone can resign and get another job doesn't mean it's OK to abuse the shit out of them. Furthermore, you're severely overestimating the mobility of this particular class of workers. For a lot of people, finding another job (or heck, just a job) is not easy.
- highprofit 10y agoWalmart does this all the time in Asian markets.
- taurath 10y agoThe whole "contract only" work environment hearkens back to the 1920s and 30s.
- crivabene 10y agoReading the article I understand that the agency who subcontract drivers for Amazon is making them "work illegal hours", not Amazon itself. Now I am not saying that Amazon is not doing that, I am just saying that no evidence is presented on the fact that Amazon is aware of what is happening with the drivers.
- notyourwork 10y agoI agree but it wouldn't be a headline if the title did not include a well known name like Amazon.
- HarryHirsch 10y agoMarket power gets you headlines, so it isn't exactly surprising that there is overlap between abusive labour practices and making the news.
- dx034 10y agoIt is likely that Amazon dictates terms that don't leave the agency another choice. I don't think the owners of the agency will make a lot of money either. Creating such an agency isn't too hard, so if AHC doesn't comply they'll find someone who opens up a new one and delivers the same price again. In my opinion Amazon is at fault. A company has to know the contractors it works with. It's a similar argument as with child labor. Just because a subcontractor that produces for you exploits children doesn't mean that it's not your fault. Companies, especially at that size, have a duty to closely monitor their whole supply chain for violations of laws and ethics.
- Zombieball 10y agoAre we glossing over the fact that none of these drivers work for Amazon? > A BBC reporter got a job with AHC services I think the real issue at play here is the use of contract workers to skirt labour laws. Perhaps governments need to stop differentiating between part time and full time workers given the assumption everyone needs to make a living wage some how, even if it is through multiple "part time" jobs. Just throwing out thoughts.
- Symbiote 10y agoThe UK is already doing this, first with Uber, but also several, large, local delivery startups. The tax loss is significant, so I don't expect the situation to last very long.
- Zombieball 10y agoWhat's causing the tax loss? Businesses fleeing the country?
- jon-wood 10y agoPeople not paying income tax and national insurance - they're classified as contractors, so technically they're responsible for their own deductions, but I'd be very surprised if many of them are actually paying anything.
- Symbiote 10y agoThat's what I was thinking of, but it's probably also that they simply aren't paying as much in wages. The older companies at least pay minimum wage + overtime when needed.
- Zombieball 10y agoMakes a lot of sense. I didn't think about the forgone taxes. Probably quite significant.
- petre 10y agoThe next time you buy stuff with free shipping from Amazon Prime just remember some driver gets screwed on their wage.
- colejohnson66 10y agoWhile you're right in quite a few areas, I have only had one package delivered by OnTrac. Literally everything else is USPS or UPS (and maybe one FedEx)
- wav-part 10y agoAnd this is a low margin business to begin with. People clamouring for union should take the red pill first.
- mindcrime 10y agoIt's interesting how almost everyone here seems to be assuming that Amazon is at fault, and accepting the reporter's story as complete, accurate and unbiased...
- dazc 10y agoThis kind of thing has been going on for years in one guise or another but the BBC has some axes to grind so lets make out it's something unique to amazon. The BBC actually has some bogus self-employment issues of it's own but since this is just 'talent' using clever tax avoidance methods it's not a story.
- Angostura 10y agoDo you have any reason to suggest that it isn't?
- mindcrime 10y agoYes... the simple observation that everybody has an agenda. I don't consider any news source to be worthy of being taken at face value. I feel we should be at least somewhat skeptical of, well, pretty much everything.
- gdulli 10y agoIf Amazon didn't already have such a long-standing terrible reputation about how it treats its employees (both warehouse and corporate), its business partners, (Hachette) etc. it wouldn't be the default reaction. Amazon's actions have consequences.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThey've probably seen more than one from a diverse set of sources that are all consistent about Amazon's exploitative practices on drivers and people in warehouses. Contracting people out to screw them is standard practice in the low-cost, shipping industry. On warehouse side, they force people to sign non-compete agreements in areas where the many warehouses are about the only decent-paying jobs they can get. Just between those two would make me default against Amazon on a story making them look bad as I already know they're scum. I actually know someone who I think is an Amazon driver. I'll ask him about it. He's hesitant to talk about whoever he contracts for, though, since they'll fire him if they find out he was source of negative information. There's some kind of NDA or similar policy involved.
- sceew 10y agoBig Tech needs to start receiving the same level of scrutiny Big Banks do. Trump wants to crack down on Amazon -- a good first step.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- patkai 10y agoAmazon is supposed to make money with innovation, not exploitation.
- questionr 10y agoEngineers are not immune to such wage-fixing practices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... even family-oriented companies like Pixar worked against their employees http://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/animation-wage-fixing-lawsuit-explainer-community-131812.html http://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/animation-wage-fixi...
- anguswithgusto 10y agoI read a great piece recently that explains why these big tech-cum-delivery companies treat their drivers so poorly. Worth checking out: https://medium.com/@review/the-food-delivery-death-star-85f9a121313 https://medium.com/@review/the-food-delivery-death-star-85f9...
- usrusr 10y agoA great read indeed, but I don't think it explains anything. All it left me with were more questions: "why, oh my god, why???" In the end, all those examples (except forkable?) are just glorified directories. They also do payment, which makes them so attractive for investors (finger in the real money stream, not just hoping for crumbs tossed to yet another ads service), but also comes with the responsibility to think about non-fixed cost, something that much of the startup bubble seems to have forgotten that it even exits. I hope that I'm the end, lean directory specialists, payment specialists and so on will keep the upper hand. Food delivery is not Amazon, where even if I order from marketplace I would love to forget that I'm not really dealing with Amazon. In food delivery, even if I do the transaction through an aggregator service, I'm all interested in the individual kitchen and would ideally about the aggregator service. Buying on Amazon marketplace I would prefer to get the goods from Amazon directly instead of some nameless seller, buying from a food aggregator I would prefer it if the transaction convenience would be available directly from the individual kitchen.
- throwaway420 10y ago> big tech-cum-delivery companies Well, there's a startup for everything I suppose.
- elcct 10y agoNobody is forcing those drivers to work for Amazon. If there are people willing to work in described conditions, that should be nobody business except involved parties.
- jon-wood 10y ago> If there are people willing to work in described conditions, that should be nobody business except involved parties. Involved parties like the person who gets hit by a van driven by someone who hasn't had a break in the last 14 hours, and is paying more attention to the device telling him where the next delivery is than the road.
- elcct 10y agoMost countries have a law regarding dangerous driving.
- empath75 10y agoWhy should they have laws against dangerous driving? If someone runs into someone else, that's an issue between the two of them that should be resolved with pistols at dawn, the way that gentlemen used to do it. /s
- jon-wood 10y agoYes, they do indeed. Like the one that specifies how long you can drive professionally for in a day, and how often you have to take a break.