The situation that is happening at Amazon is very appalling, and it needs to be addressed. Recently, there were some allegations that brought attention to several Amazon delivery drivers who are having to pee in bottles and defecate in bags due to being overworked. Simply, the driver’s routes are filled to the brink with delivery stops that they cannot afford to stop and use a restroom.
Congressman Mark Pocan took to Twitter to call out Amazon for its deceptive practices. Pocan tweeted, “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a “progressive workplace” when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles.”
Not long after Pocan’s stance, Amazon’s “Amazon News” Twitter page replied, “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do and have great wages and health care from day one.”
Amazon’s brand account’s public responses elicited replies from government officials of both Democratic and Republican parties, and most importantly, labor reporters proving Pocan’s allegations to be, in fact, accurate.
On the social media platform, shared screenshots of attained emails from different Amazon workplaces addressing the “pee bottle” matter. Is this what Amazon has become, a company denying concrete evidence of a problem plaguing their workers?
A former delivery driver for Amazon, Halie Marie Brown, told the Intercept–who first broke the story that Amazon was aware of the practices–“[drivers] are literally implicitly forced to do so, otherwise we will end up losing our jobs for too many undelivered packages.”
Amazon has always received controversy (rightfully so) for overworking their employees, not paying their employees enough, business practices, just to list a few.
We at the Xavierite Council Board believe that this is horrendous. But what needs to happen to change this?
One member of the board said, “Government intervention is seriously needed. I can’t fathom that Amazon has been able to go on for this long without any real penalties. This is exactly why we have unions in place to support overworked employees. I’m hoping by what has transpired on Twitter recently that there will be change; that Amazon sees this and goes, “Oh hey, that’s not right, we have to fix this immediately. And so what if our packages come a day late? I rather wait another day or two for a useless item than to have a worker fired because they couldn’t deliver it before 8:00 P.M. Hopefully, this sparks some major changes at the company because eventually if they don’t change their ways, I won’t be shopping through their outlet ever again.”
A member of the board added, “When it comes to issues like workers rights and conditions, I believe that if employees are not treated with dignity and respect that all people deserve then the blame should squarely fall at the feet of those in charge for putting profit over anything else. This is especially important to consider when the former owner of the company is one of the richest men in the world. What needs to happen when an issue of workers rights like this occurs, is that on top of legal suits filed for a number of reasons, there needs to be a greater push for workers to unionize. Though I assume that this is something that the workers have tried to do in the past. One hope would be that the current public outcry about this would lead to Amazon conceding though you then need to have a way to ensure that Amazon cannot undermine its workers in the future. This is where the government should step in and, at least, attempt to safeguard its citizens from being manipulated and exploited by companies who only see them as interchangeable parts that can simply be replaced after one can no longer function optimally. We have laws on the books that are meant to protect workers and those should be used now more than ever and if the worry becomes that of businesses like Amazon finding loopholes like having someone work just under full time so that they cannot receive benefits then the government should do more to provide for its citizens and actually try to help out the little guy for a change.”
Another of the members said, “I didn’t even know that was happening. I think that for it to change more awareness needs to be brought to it because I personally hadn’t heard of this. Once people know about it more then maybe amazon will feel the heat and change some things. If nothing changes then I believe we definitely need government intervention because it’s i humane to not allow workers to go to a proper bathroom
Another member of the board said, “I think there should be government intervention to ensure that people are comfortably able to use the bathroom on their own time. That’s just something that is a basic human necessity, and just like in schools K-12, students aren’t allowed to go just because a teacher denies it. But in college, you go if you gotta go. You would think this is common sense and common decency, but there’s so many surprises to how we are restricted in certain jobs and schools and such. A job is a job, and there’s always time to deliver later. They should definitely be given time to stop for a bathroom break.”
Lastly, a member of the Xavierite Council Board said, “1. Amazon needs to show they care for their Amazon workers. Being able to use the restroom is something everyone should be allowed to do. We can see that Amazon truly only cares about earning money and not the well being of their workers. 2. Government intervention should be made. If they can’t afford for their workers to stop at restrooms then they should invest in their amazon vehicles to have restrooms installed. Or better yet, not make such horrendous work conditions for amazon drivers.”
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