Amazon drivers “work illegal hours”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37708996

by triplesec • 10 years ago

135 86 10 years ago

bbc.co.uk

rblatz• 10 years ago

This 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.

moyta13• 10 years ago

Nah, 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• 10 years ago

Actually, 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.

nameisu2• 10 years ago

I 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• 10 years ago

Does 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.

moyta13• 10 years ago

Talk 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• 10 years ago

It'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...

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• 10 years ago

It'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

moyta13• 10 years ago

Is 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• 10 years ago

To 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.

moyta13• 10 years ago

At 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!

slipperyp• 10 years ago

It's not a horrible place to work. I've worked at Microsoft and work for Amazon now. It's unavoidable that with a company the size of Amazon there will be some (maybe a lot) of bad areas to work and it's obvious that despite even the best hiring practices in the world, you'll find people winding up in a position for which they are not a good fit.

There's a lot of interesting work, though, and a lot of people happy working on it. I wouldn't tell anyone it's the best place to work or that it's "better" to work than another place, but I love what I do and work with hundreds of people who (more or less) feel the same. I also know people who don't feel this way and I encourage them to move on or move out because nobody should be in a job they really dislike (and I'm aware of the incredible privilege that's reflected by my ability to say that).

duaneb• 10 years ago

I hear working hours are more about the team than the company.

mabbo• 10 years ago

As a software developer at Amazon, if they treated us badly, we'd all quit and have new jobs next week.

Tech is different.

middleclick• 10 years ago

I have never understood what people mean by "is this news?". Just because you know it, doesn't mean others do. I certainly had no idea about this before. Can we address the issue at hand instead of being condescending about it?

Chinjut• 10 years ago

Fine, it's not news, it's just a true story that deserves response and propagation. How about that?

moyta13• 10 years ago

That is pretty good, just wish the BBC wrote a better article and ended with suggestions on who to contact regarding wage theft & how to organize to fight back against it, instead of ending the article with the Amazon contractor saying your free to quit at any time.

0xmohit• 10 years ago

Some 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.

moyta13• 10 years ago

When there is no serious labor movement, and enforcement of labor laws is weak, employers can do practically anything they want.

tn13• 10 years ago

That 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.

drieddust5• 10 years ago

Agreed and code monkeys who think they have options and complete freedom, wait for few more cycles of unchecked consolidation.

drieddust5• 10 years ago

So much in the name of free market goes on. If IT industry will be allowed to progress unchecked, natural monopolies will emerge and it won't be good for consumer,smaller businesses relaying on big boys, and employees. But seems like free market cool aids is being served and drunk happily by the world.

On the contrary strong labour Laws and high productivity rate in quite a few European countries is a fact ignored conveniently by power greedy moguls. If left unchecked, they will happily move us back gloomy dawn of Industrial Age when it was ok to force workers to toil to death.

Adam smith didn't dream of monopolistic and unregulated market but only one part of his capitalism theory is cherry picked. Unregulated capitalism is a recipe for disaster.

Edit: fixed typos.

drieddust5• 10 years ago

Edit 2: Don't understand the down votes. Some explanation will help.

secfirstmd• 10 years ago

It's de facto already happening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

samdoidge2• 10 years ago

Natural monopolies to do not exist in a free market without government intervention - I'd be happy to see a counter example.

debacle• 10 years ago

This is a US company trying to export US dysfunction for their benefit. I imagine this will be shot down.

highprofit• 10 years ago

Walmart does this all the time in Asian markets.

taurath• 10 years ago

The whole "contract only" work environment hearkens back to the 1920s and 30s.

crivabene• 10 years ago

Reading 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.

notyourwork2• 10 years ago

I agree but it wouldn't be a headline if the title did not include a well known name like Amazon.

HarryHirsch• 10 years ago

Market power gets you headlines, so it isn't exactly surprising that there is overlap between abusive labour practices and making the news.

dx034• 10 years ago

It 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.

Zombieball3• 10 years ago

Are 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.

Symbiote2• 10 years ago

The 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.

Zombieball3• 10 years ago

What's causing the tax loss? Businesses fleeing the country?

petre• 10 years ago

The next time you buy stuff with free shipping from Amazon Prime just remember some driver gets screwed on their wage.

colejohnson66• 10 years ago

While 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-part2• 10 years ago

And this is a low margin business to begin with. People clamouring for union should take the red pill first.

mindcrime2• 10 years ago

It'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• 10 years ago

This 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• 10 years ago

Do you have any reason to suggest that it isn't?

mindcrime2• 10 years ago

Yes... 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• 10 years ago

If 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.

nickpsecurity3• 10 years ago

They'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• 10 years ago

Big Tech needs to start receiving the same level of scrutiny Big Banks do. Trump wants to crack down on Amazon -- a good first step.

patkai• 10 years ago

Amazon is supposed to make money with innovation, not exploitation.

questionr• 10 years ago

Engineers are not immune to such wage-fixing practices

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-fixi...

anguswithgusto• 10 years ago

I 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-85f9...

usrusr• 10 years ago

A 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• 10 years ago

big tech-cum-delivery companies

Well, there's a startup for everything I suppose.

elcct3• 10 years ago

Nobody 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-wood3• 10 years 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.

elcct3• 10 years ago

Most countries have a law regarding dangerous driving.

Amazon drivers “work illegal hours”

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