Amazon treats me worse than the warehouse robots – that’s why I’m walking out

theguardian.com:

Timed to go to the toilet. Told off for leaning. Monitored for each package completed. As a worker at Amazon, I often feel that we aren’t being treated as people.

But for me, the moment I knew we needed to go on strike was when we were told we’d be getting a pay rise of just 50p extra an hour. We came into work one day and the managers were holding briefings – telling us that this was all we were going to get, and that we shouldn’t expect anything better. Just 50p extra, when we’re facing rising prices in every shop and energy bills going through the roof. The company describes the offer as “competitive pay”, pointing out that we get employee benefits on top of the hourly wage. Yet the company is making millions – if not billions – for the people at the top.

Everyone who I work with at the warehouse in Coventry is frustrated. Frustrated at bad pay, at the long hours we have to work just to make ends meet, and at sky-high profits that we don’t see any benefit from. The shifts are hard work, spent all on our feet, walking miles back and forth through large warehouses. All of that for just £10.50 an hour. That’s why about 400 workers at our warehouse are striking today.

We are treated worse than the robots doing automated tasks in the warehouses. If the robots have an issue, the company pays for them to be serviced, whereas if we drop below certain targets multiple times, we can be fired – we have to sort it out or get out. (The company says that its system “recognises great performance”, and that it offers “coaching” to employees who aren’t meeting targets.)

If you take too long to find a toilet in the huge warehouse, managers will ask you for account for this time – using doublespeak to describe it as being “idle”. Which