London: As the workers of online retail giant Amazon hold strikes in the United Kingdom overpay, some have shared their ordeal of working in “severe” conditions at the company, with shocking claims that even their toilet breaks are timed. A BBC report cited workers at the company’s Coventry warehouse in England who said they are constantly monitored and “upbraided for an idle time lasting just a few minutes”.
Two Amazon workers told BBC that the robots in the warehouse “are treated better than us”.
Darren Westwood and Garfield Hilton said that the managers asked questions if they took a toilet break.
“The thing with stopping work is that they want to know why,” said Mr Hilton. “So if the time is beyond a couple of minutes they can see it on the system.”
Mr Hilton shared that he has diabetes and it is not always possible to find toilets close by in the building and the process of locating one and returning can sometimes take upwards of 15 minutes. “They will then question you, ‘what were you doing?'”
That’s not all, the managers also track staff performance and time.
However, a spokesman for Amazon said: “Performance is only measured when an employee is at their station and logged in to do their job.
“If an employee logs out, which they can do at any time, the performance management tool is paused.”
Amazon said 178 of its 2,000 workers at the warehouse had voted to strike, reported Reuters.
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