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Amazon.com warehouse workers fired if goals aren't met

Thu, 04/05/2012 - 11:30 — Dave Culver
Section(s): 
Business
Labor

  • Amazon.com strives to be increasingly efficient to ship customers' orders as quickly as possible from its fulfillment centers around the world. And while the company has a safety record better than most, some warehouse employees say the relentless drive to boost production wears them down and costs them their jobs.
  • Our New Year's Resolution for Amazon.com
  • The Morning Call’s Amazon Sweatshop Probe

Hal Bernton and Susan Kelleher, Seattle (WA) Times

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Hal Bernton / Seattle Times

Connie Milby worked at Amazon's fulfillment center in Campbellsville, Ky., for 10 years. As a "picker," she could walk more than 10 miles a day to retrieve items ordered by Amazon customers.

On an average day, 51-year-old Connie Milby covered more than 10 miles in her tennis shoes, walking and climbing up and down three flights of stairs to retrieve tools, toys and a vast array of other merchandise for Amazon.com shoppers.
She filled online orders for more than a decade, working through summer heat and winter chill inside the company's south-central Kentucky warehouse.

One constant was the pace that Milby tried to keep to avoid write-ups from her supervisors that could put her $12.50-per-hour job at risk.

More...

Related:

Our New Year's Resolution for Amazon.com, Hilary Woodward, American Rights at Work

  • Our efforts signaled to Amazon that consumers are carefully watching how it treats its workers.
  • Almost 13,000 boycott Amazon.com
  • Special Report | The Wal-Mart Problem

The Morning Call’s Amazon Sweatshop Probe, Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review

  • Spencer Soper’s terrific piece of reporting goes around the company, which wouldn’t respond to his interview requests, and uses interviews with twenty workers as well as open records requests to show how the company ran a modern-day sweatshop. Literally.
  • An excellent investigation exposes poor conditions at a big Pennsylvania warehouse.
  • Tell Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that you won't stand for these and other miserable working conditions.
     

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