The author who found that Amazon warehouse staff members were peeing in bottles for fear of punishment for missing productivity targets says the working culture there was like a "prison."
James Bloodworth worked undercover in 2016 at an Amazon warehouse in the UK to do research for a book on low-paying jobs in Britain.
He described to Business Insider how he had been collecting items as a "picker" when he came across a bottle of urine on the shelf.
Bloodworth also said workers didn't have enough time for a proper lunch break and were often penalized for taking sick days.
James Bloodworth investigated casual work and its effect on people's lives for his book "Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain." To research how people cope, he took low-paying jobs at an Amazon warehouse, in social care, at a call center, at a building site, and as an Uber driver.
Bloodworth spent just under a month in 2016 working as a "picker" at an Amazon fulfillment center in Rugeley, in central England, which involved retrieving items that people had ordered for delivery.
Bloodworth said he was employed through Transline, an agency Amazon cut ties with last year after a 2015 investigation by The Guardian found it had sent about 1,500 people to work in poor conditions at the warehouse of Sports Direct, a major British retailer.
Bloodworth said Amazon staff members had to meet high productivity targets that were feasible only if they ran around the warehouse — something Amazon didn't allow for health and safety reasons.
"The job itself is really bad," he told Business Insider. "I've worked in warehouses before, but this was nothing like I had experienced. You don't have proper breaks — by the time you get to the canteen, you only have 15 or 20 minutes for lunch, in a 10-1/2-hour working day. You don't have time to eat properly to get a drink.
"You have to go through security when you leave the warehouse, and that adds five minutes. It's like an airport — belt off, watch off. The atmosphere is what I imagine a prison feels like. You felt like you were walking on eggshells."
Bloodworth's claim that Amazon workers felt so rushed that they would pee in bottles caused outrage on social media sites such as Twitter and Reddit on Monday.
Bloodworth had told The Sun that workers often didn't take a break to go to the toilet because they were too sparse to get to quickly and they feared punishment for missing productivity targets. So they peed in bottles instead, he said.
"I'd just take the bollocking for idle time," he said. "If you're on the top floor, you know it will take five minutes to go the toilet, and all the time you're being admonished for taking too much idle time."
He said he discovered the problem when he came across a bottle of urine while looking for items on an upper floor of the warehouse.
"One day I'm walking down the aisle, and I go to pick up an item, and there's a bottle of straw-colored water on the shelf. And at first I thought, 'Oh, what's that?'" he said. "And then it was very obvious what it was. And there was a pool of water next to it. It struck me — it was so obvious why someone would do that."
Bloodworth also outlined Amazon's penalty points system — he said that racking up six points for issues like unexplained absences could lead to disciplinary proceedings and dismissal.
A separate investigation by The Times in 2016 similarly found that Amazon workers were penalized for taking sick days.
"It's the sheer oppressiveness of management regime there," he said. "It's the most oppressive place I had ever worked, easily."
uk.businessinsider.com
