Amazon packers are monitored if inactive for more than five minutes
Amazon closely tracks workers after five minutes or more of inactivity, the e-commerce giant has revealed, as it prepares to pack extra staff into its warehouses to satisfy a flurry of Christmas orders.
It wrote in a letter to US Senator Elizabeth Warren that it flags any warehouse workers who spend five minutes or more without scanning an item to their managers. The managers can track a packer’s movements on a special computer system, which detects their location through the devices the packers use to scan items and packages.
The e-commerce giant said that workers who accumulated more than 30 minutes of unaccounted break time or missed quotas for packing or gift wrapping in one shift could be followed up by managers. In some cases, workers have been fired. Amazon sacked 25 workers in its ‘‘fulfilment centre’’ in River Fall, Massachusetts, where it employs 3,00 people, for taking too long on a break, and fired two more who failed to meet their performance target.
Amazon said it expected a ‘‘certain level of performance from our employees and we continue to set productivity targets objectively, based on previous performance levels achieved by our workforce’’.
The company said performance was 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 hour or day’’.
In the US, only employees in the bottom 5 per cent of workers might expect corrective action, the company said, adding: ‘‘Before any coaching or disciplinary actions are taken, managers must first have a conversation with employees where exceptions, such as lavatory breaks, prayer time and time to clean stations are taken into account.’’
The tech giant had previously claimed not to enforce quotas on its staff. But in the letter to Warren, which it used to defend itself against claims that it was employing people in unsafe conditions, it revealed strict rules around performance targets.
A Christmas worker should giftwrap 21 parcels per hour and an order ‘‘picker’’ should pick up to 36 items per hour, it said. – Telegraph Group