‘We are human beings, not slaves and animals’: Brutal conditions inside Amazon warehouse

AT AMAZON, workers must pack an item every 30 seconds for gruelling 10-hour shifts, toilet breaks are timed — and ambulances are regularly called.

A member of staff packs items for delivery at the Amazon Fulfilment centre in Peterborough, UK. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images

AMAZON warehouse workers unable to handle the strain of punishing quotas are regularly taken away by ambulance, according to an exposé revealing shocking working conditions at the e-commerce giant.

Alan Selby, a journalist with the Mirror newspaper in the UK, spent five weeks undercover at the sprawling warehouse at Tilbury, Essex, wearing a hidden camera which captured images of exhausted staff falling asleep on their feet.

“One colleague was taken to hospital by ambulance when they collapsed on the job, after struggling on despite feeling unwell,” Selby said.

“Another ambulance was called after a girl suffered a panic attack when she was told compulsory overtime would mean her working up to 55 hours a week over Christmas.

“One of my colleagues told me, ‘Everybody suffers here’. I pulled my hamstring but I just had to carry on. My friend spent two days off after she damaged her knee ligaments.’”

Under constant camera surveillance, workers — who are discouraged from sitting down during their 10-hour shifts — are required to pick an item for packing every 30 seconds, with their “units per hour” constantly displayed on a screen in front of them, Selby reports.

In the packing area, workers must pack 120 items per hour, with that figure soon to rise to 200 items. Supervisors regularly approach staff to remind them how they were performing. “As long as you’re not bottom you’ve no need to worry ... for the time being,” Selby says he was told.

He described how a whiteboard for staff comments displayed complaints about filthy toilets and short breaks. “Why are we not allowed to sit when it is quiet and not busy? We are human beings, not slaves and animals,” one said.

In a statement to news.com.au, Amazon said the company “provides a safe and positive workplace with competitive pay and benefits from day one”.

“We are proud to have been able to create thousands of new permanent roles in our UK fulfilment centres in recent years,” a spokesman said. “One of the reasons we’ve been able to attract so many people to join us is that we offer great jobs and a positive work environment with opportunities for growth.

“As with nearly all companies, we expect a certain level of performance from our associates. Productivity targets are set objectively, based on previous performance levels achieved by our workforce.

“Associate performance is measured and evaluated over a long period of time as we know that a variety of things could impact the ability to meet expectations in any given day or hour. We support people who are not performing to the levels expected with dedicated coaching to help them improve.

“Even with careful planning, as an organisation that has seasonal fluctuations of customer demand, overtime is sometimes required and when this happens associates are paid a premium.

“We also have an exception process so that associates can alert us to times when they just cannot do overtime for valid personal reasons. The vast majority of exception requests in Tilbury had been accepted.”

Last year, a BBC journalist who went undercover for two weeks at an Amazon depot as a delivery, reported similarly gruelling conditions, describing how some drivers would urinate and even defecate in their vehicles to meet crushing deadlines.

Amazon, which was widely expected to launch its Australian operation last week after a “soft-launch” on Thursday, earlier this year confirmed its first local fulfilment centre in Melbourne’s Dandenong South.

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