Amazon slammed by US staff in exposé
Firm’s callous disregard cited
WORKING four days in a row without sleep; a woman with breast cancer being put on “performance-improvement plans” together with another who had just had a stillborn child; staff routinely bursting into tears; continual monitoring; workers encouraged to turn on each other to keep their jobs. Life at Amazon sounds bleak, according to a devastating, 5 900-word exposé by The New York Times.
The global internet retailer founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos had been accused of treating staff in the UK “like cattle”, but it was claimed that their counterparts in the US faced even tougher conditions.
Staff in a Pennsylvania warehouse allegedly worked in stifling heat as ambulances waited to take them away when they collapsed, and air conditioning was only fitted after newspaper reports.
Former staff at the company’s headquarters in Seattle also spoke of working 80-hour weeks, getting e-mails from the office while on holiday or late at night, oppressive scrutiny of performance, and callous disregard for personal crises.
Uncaring culture
An ex-Amazon employee who had a stillborn child recalled how she had “just experienced the most devastating event in my life” but was then told by the company that she was being put on a performance-improvement plan. This, she said, was “to make sure my focus stayed on my job”.
Even the former human resources executive who was required to put the woman on the plan said she had questioned if it was the right thing to do.
“What kind of company do we want to be?” she asked her bosses at the time.
When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they see it as a major weakness.
This was just one of a litany of similar accounts.
A woman suffering from breast cancer was also put on the plan, as she was told “difficulties” in her “personal life” were interfering with her work.
Molly Jay, who worked in the Kindle team, said she had been given high performance ratings for years until she started caring for her father when he was dying of cancer. Jay said she was told she was a “problem” by her boss, took unpaid leave and did not return.
“When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they see it as a major weakness,” she said.
A worker who miscarried twins went on a business trip the day after having surgery when her boss allegedly told her: “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done. From where you are in life, trying to start a family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.”
Former Amazon engineer Jason Merkoski said: “The sheer number of innovations means things go wrong, you need to rectify, and then explain, and heaven help if you got an email from Jeff. It’s as if you’ve got the chief executive of the company in bed with you at 3am breathing down your neck.”
One former worker’s fiancé used to drive to her office at 10pm and call her cellphone repeatedly to make her leave. They went on holiday to Florida but she continued to work – only to develop an ulcer from overwork.
Meanwhile, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos asked employees to report to human resources any “shockingly callous management practices” like those described in a New York Times article published over the weekend.
Bezos request came in a memo to employees refuting how the retailer’s culture was portrayed in the Times’ article.
“The article goes further than reporting isolated anecdotes. It claims that our intentional approach is to create a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard,” Bezos wrote. “Again, I don’t recognise this Amazon and I very much hope you don’t, either.” – Additional reporting by Bloomberg