Sick Amazon ‘elves’ face sack

‘The retailer, which last year made more than £6bn of revenues in Britain, has a disciplinary system under which points are accrued for illness. Workers are issued a penalty point for each episode of sickness.

Workers are told that more than one point will result in a “series of counselling and disciplinary meetings” and between four and six points can result in dismissal.

In one case, a woman who spent three days in hospital with a kidney infection was docked two points, reduced to one on appeal, despite providing a hospital note.

The system has been revealed in an investigation by The Sunday Times at Amazon’s sorting depot in Dunfermline, Scotland.

The undercover reporter was paid £7.35 per hour by an agency that supplies workers to Amazon, but was left with less than the minimum wage after paying £10 for the agency’s bus which took her to the site 40 miles from her home in Glasgow.

It emerged this weekend that some low-paid workers are camping out in woodland near the sorting depot to avoid paying the bus costs and ensure they are left with more than the minimum wage…

The reporter obtained a job with PMP Recruitment, one of the two main agencies that hires and supervises workers at the Dunfermline depot. The investigation found:

• Workers being threatened with dismissal if they accrued too many points for illness, late attendance or absence, or for making too many errors or failing to hit productivity targets.
  
  
• A claim from a worker in Amazon’s on-site first-aid clinic that workers were under pressure to hit targets and were suffering injuries in the rush to collect products
  
  
• Workers were expected to cover more than 10 miles a day in the warehouse collecting items, but water dispensers to ensure they avoided dehydration were regularly empty
  
  
• The reporter was told she had to sign an opt-out of the working time directive, which limits weekly hours to 48, in order to get a job.

The reporter was employed as a “temporary warehouse operative” at Amazon’s vast plant in Fife. She worked in the “picking” department, which involved retrieving items from across several floors of the sprawling warehouse, according to orders displayed on a handheld scanner she was given. She worked at least 10 hours a day, with an unpaid 30-minute lunch break and two 15-minute paid breaks….

Under the system set out in the Amazon temporary associate handbook, half a point is issued to recruits who are late to work or late back from a break; one point for “one period of sickness”; and three points for “no call, no show”. The undercover reporter was told that anyone who was more than 30 seconds late in arriving at work or returning after a break would be subject to the half-point penalty.

Workers were also told that if they made more than one error a week in collecting items or failed to hit productivity targets they could be subject to a disciplinary process, which could result in dismissal.’