![]() ![]() Its findings will be presented at the union’s 101st annual congress in Brighton next week. Mick Rix, a GMB national officer, said the union was seeking advice about potential legal action about the physical pressures put on staff by Amazon, many of whom use electronic devices to monitor the speed at which they work. I am feeling depressed when I am at work.” I know this is true because I saw ladies with huge bumps picking.”Īnother woman said: “I am pregnant and they put me to stand 10 hours without a chair … They are telling me to work hard even they know I am pregnant. “My manager told me that most women are working on picking until their maternity leave. I had a meeting with a safety manager and was also told: ‘It’s not what you want, it is what we decide’. One woman said to the union: “I told them I could not walk so many miles and I could not pick from low locations. The GMB added that four-fifths of the 200 union members working for the American firm who had responded to a survey said they suffered pain as a result of their workload, with one pregnant woman complaining she had been forced to stand for her entire 10-hour shift. Nevertheless, ambulance visits at our UK fulfilment centres last year was 0.00001 per worked hour, which is dramatically low.”Ī spokesman said that, according to the Health and Safety Executive’s method of reporting injuries, Amazon had 43% fewer injuries on average than other companies conducting transportation and warehousing activities in the UK. Requests for ambulance services at our fulfilment centres are predominantly associated with personal health events and are not work related. That compares to only eight calls in total to a nearby Tesco warehouse of a similar physical size and where about 1,300 people work, over the same period, according to another FOI request by the union.Īmazon said it was “simply not correct to suggest that we have unsafe working conditions based on this data or on unsubstantiated anecdotes. At least 1,800 people work year-round at the Rugeley warehouse and more than 2,000 more can work over the peak Christmas period. Those judges’ rulings can then be appealed to the NLRB’s presidentially appointed members in Washington and from there to federal court.There were also two call-outs to the site for electric shocks and eight for people who had fallen unconscious. When regional NLRB offices find a company has broken the law and aren’t able to secure a settlement, they issue complaints on behalf of the agency’s general counsel, which are then heard by administrative law judges. The NLRB, which usually investigates such claims at its regional offices around the country, is assessing whether the similarities between cases against Amazon merit a consolidated response and approach, a spokesperson for the board said. labor regulator since the pandemic began. The charges are among dozens of complaints filed against Amazon with the U.S. Some Amazon employees called in sick to protest the firings, one of a series of employee protests at the company last year. “That’s the bomb that set them off,” Costa said in an interview last year. The pair say they were fired shortly after circulating an invitation to their coworkers to attend a virtual event connecting warehouse workers and tech employees. Last year, as the coronavirus began spreading, they sought to use their group to highlight the demands of workers who pack and ship items in the company’s warehouses. The New York Times reported the board’s findings earlier Monday. “It’s a moral victory and really shows that we are on the right side of history and the right side of the law,” Cunningham told the newspaper.Ĭunningham and Costa, both user-experience designers, were among the leaders of an employee group that pushed Amazon to do more to address climate change. “We terminated these employees not for talking publicly about working conditions, safety, or sustainability, but rather, for repeatedly violating internal policies.” “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which are lawful,” Jaci Anderson, an Amazon spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. ![]() Their dismissals ran afoul of legal protections for employees who advocate for changes to their workplace, and the NLRB plans to file a complaint accusing Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company does not settle the case, according to a letter sent to the pair by a lawyer with the NLRB’s Seattle regional office. ![]() violated labor law when it fired two high-profile internal critics last year, the National Labor Relations Board’s prosecutors have found.Įmily Cunningham and Maren Costa were terminated last April after raising concerns about Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers during the pandemic. ![]()
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