"You're Just Disposable": Former Amazon Workers Speak Out | "Amazon Empire" | FRONTLINE

over the following years Amazon would hire hundreds of thousands of workers and become the largest private jobs creator in the country at the fulfillment centers Bezos experimented with new techniques and technologies to boost productivity willingness to experiment is the key to being able to do new things so we do you know hundreds of experiments every day in our fulfillment centers to get a little bit better can effect incremental invention [Music] when a company called Kiva perfected a warehouse robot Amazon bought the whole company shipping robots it helped transform the work environment in Amazon's warehouses [Music] when I first showed up at Amazon in 1999 I let our global operations team Jeff Wilkie created the Amazon Fulfillment Center system and is one of two CEOs under Jeff Bezos as we've added two hundred thousand robots in that same time for instance 2012 we've added three hundred thousand people in our fulfillment centers so what happens is the robots change the work so they allow us people don't have to walk as far which is a complaint that we've heard in the past they make the job safer they make them higher quality because we present a smaller set of options to customer to two employees and that's all good for customers and it's good for employees but at the same time complaints have persisted people who've worked in warehouses for decades say this is different this is not the same we're here today because we want to make sure that these workers know about the rights in the workplace especially around heat Shaharyar cos she is an advocate for warehouse workers in the San Bernardino California area an Amazon hub with ten fulfillment centers and over 15,000 employees because of the way that Amazon operates because of the way that they set their rates for productivity it's a lot harder work physically but also psychologically we sat down with a group in San Bernardino who'd recently worked at Amazon when they first got here I thought it was exciting like for me I was thinking maybe I could find a place where you know I'm gonna set roots of a good job you know move up in place but after being there for a while like there's no way it's like okay this is where I could probably make a career but once you work there for a certain amount of time is just like it's just not realistic how they expect you to work okay like dozens of workers we've spoken to around the country they say they've struggled to keep up with the rate amazon expected them to pick and pack items how realistic are the rates that they're giving you I mean there's absolutely no way to make rate you know you got to find a little ways to cheat it because once you hit rate by the end of the week they race it they bump it up again because they started hey people - I would hit those rates could hit those numbers hey that's pushing a little harder every week it seemed like it was going up you have security cameras right behind you at all times that are looking at you 24/7 and if you don't meet standards or their rates you're out the door you're just disposable every worker has a scanner at all times that basically track exactly where you're at and they have a little blue line at the bottom of the screen and it has like how many seconds that you have to have it done by the time it hits zero and it puts you into panic mode and pretty much you can't talk to people you can't be in the same aisle as them you just constantly have to sit this cannon like a robot all day long if they catch you not scanning you get it right up and what they're doing is they're producing this mass of data that they are using to be able to analyze the entire work force we're not treated as human beings we're not even treated as robots we're treated as part of the data stream it's the incentive at any warehouse on any assembly line to get the most out of any worker you know to make rates - to be as efficient as possible to be as productive as possible so I don't see exactly what's different about Amazon as opposed to any other warehouse Amazon is the cutting edge other warehouses are starting to adopt these technologies other companies are definitely interested in doing what Amazon is doing data collection could become basically the standard for all workers and that there's net you're never good enough you're never able to keep up [Music] Amazon told us work rates are not based on an individual employees performance and that the scanning devices workers use are not for trucking people but inventory are common practice in the warehouse industry we've talked to workers around the country both current and former workers they've described the pace of work as being really grueling in the early thinking about rates and how far you could push human beings in terms of their productivity what was the thinking about that well obviously if the rates are too high you're not gonna have people showing up for work so we have 600,000 people at the company most of them are in the fulfillment centers and they come to work every day they stay for years these are considered great jobs in the hundreds of communities where we have fulfillment centers all over the world and in the u.s. we have almost every state has an operation in it and people come to work because these are great jobs they're safe we pay double the minimum wage the national minimum wage we have terrific benefits the benefits for the folks that work on the floor are the same benefits that my family has access to our family leave is like 20 weeks so the rates are set so that we can accomplish what we need to which is get orders to customers in a reasonable time and in a high-quality way and that creates a workplace that people want to come back to and they do Amazon wouldn't tell us how long fulfillment center workers stay on the job or how often they're injured but workers we spoke to say the rates are higher than other warehouses and that the company rebuffs attempts to unionize we do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers our shareholders or most importantly our associates this is a clip from a video that company says it used in the past to teach managers about employees rights and labor laws the most obvious signs would include use of words associated with unions or Union led movements like living wage or steward early on Amazon took a position to basically be anti-union well why was that decision made I don't think we made the decision to be anti-union we just feel that all of the things that that unions would would want to to get us to do we've already done what about setting rate though do you not see that there's a little bit more leverage in the hands of management in this scenario than there would be in a unionized environment I don't know it's hard to speculate on that but that I do think that we have the obligation to set rates that are again going to encourage people to seek these jobs and deliver for customers you know what we've promised what would you say to someone though who's worked in your fulfillment centers that feels as though there's been that that humans are increasingly being treated like robots because it's something that we've actually heard and I don't sense it's hyperbole well the that's not the experience that that I hadn't setting it up or that I've seen it's probably it's certainly true that that these jobs are not for everybody and there there may be people that don't want to do this kind of work Amazon executives also stressed the company has become an industry leader in training its workforce for career advancement we just announced a pledge recently to spend seven hundred million dollars to upskill which is basically creating career opportunities for people a hundred thousand of our employees we pay ninety five percent of tuition to go to us to college to get a skill that isn't about Amazon that's about creating options for the employees I would expect those people to take advantage of that work for us for a couple of years and then go do something that they would much rather do and that's okay there'll be people that will hear what you all are saying and they'll say well you signed up for physical labor a job as a job there were benefits and they're now investing at seven hundred million dollars to do retraining for other types of jobs what's the real grievance what is there to complain about I actually used to think that way for a while whenever I when I first started whoever I heard complaints from was like well it was in the job description and and you signed up for it the part they don't talk about is the safety rules that you have to ignore to make great it's not just you go in okay you do your job and that's it so you're in you're in a weird bind it's incredibly hard to meet rate while following all the safety procedures a complaint that we've heard from workers in terms of the sort of automation of their work as humans some of them telling us that yes there are high safety standards in these fulfillment centers but that in order to make rate they're having to cheat the standard a little bit I would say that's not okay so I from the moment that I arrived 20 years ago I made it very clear to our operations teams that we will not compromise the safety of our employees to do anything else so we have we have a culture that if if we are asking people to do something that is that that they have to do to fast to be safe they can raise their hand and say this isn't right and and we'll fix it

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 1,274,748

Rating: 4.7409887 out of 5

Keywords: Amazon, what is it like to work at Amazon, Amazon fulfillment centers, inside an Amazon fulfillment center, worker safety at Amazon, what does Amazon pay, Amazon jobs, jobs at Amazon, inside Amazon, Amazon Empire, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Wilke, documentary, unionizing, pressure to make rate, benefits at Amazon

Id: 3-KMXng5Cp0

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/eucalyptusoil]

I wish people would stop buying products from this exploitative company. They know they overwork/are inhumane to the warehouse workers, don't pay them well, etc.

People knowingly purchase products from this company to save a few cents or dollars (minimal savings), knowing they abuse their employees. It's becoming a monopoly, literally driving their competitors out of business who don't abuse their employees in this way. It frustrates me how many people I know, who know Amazon is abusive and continue to purchase from them.

[u/gamer_jacksman]

Yeah, I know this one was already submitted but I feel like the video deserves more views.