Amazon continues to cause controversy with the treatment of its workers
In 2020, the Amazon company was involved in a problem with two of its workers, exactly with Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, who were part of this company until April of that year.
Based on this, the United States National Labor Relations Board found that Amazon unfairly fired its two employees.
Both Cunningham and Costa, who were working as a designer at the company's Seattle headquarters, began to be dissatisfied with the company and made it known publicly in 2018.
Since then the relationship between the two parties began to get tense.
Both employees were part of a small group of employees who wanted the company to reduce its environmental impact and also take into account all the concerns of the employees in the warehouse.
Amazon employees cry out for climate justice
A group of company employees have disagreed with the company, since the dismissal of the two activists the relationship between Amazon and its employees has not been entirely good, this is how more than 8,700 colleagues have supported Cunningham's efforts and Costa.
In response to all the support they have received from their former colleagues, Cunningham has expressed the following: "All this is a moral victory and shows that we are on the right side and on the right side of the law because there must be justice."
Amazon accused the two activists of violating its external communications policy by speaking publicly about the business.
All of this led to the group of employees organizing 400 more workers to speak publicly, thus violating internal company law as well.
Both activists received institutional support
Once the dismissal of the two activists was known, both Kamala Harris of California, current Vice President of the United States and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts addressed Amazon through a letter expressing their concern about the reprisals you were taking.
Some of the paragraphs of the letter read the following: “In order to understand the reasons for the dismissal of the workers, who raised concerns about health and safety conditions, it did not constitute retaliation for complaints, so we must request information on the Amazon policies regarding discipline rules and employee firing”. This letter was signed by the two senators.
The support would not only come from the senators, but also Barnie Sanders, who was then a candidate in the primaries for the Democrats, as well as Tim Bray, former president of the Amazon cloud computing group, who would join this proposal.
Tim Bray let it be known that he was happy with the findings and progress of the labor board and asked Amazon to resolve this case as quickly and fairly as possible.
Amazon an unfair company with its employees
Just a few days ago, the Amazon company acknowledged some of its dealings with its staff, and that is how they accepted that workers are forced on many occasions to have to urinate in plastic bottles due to their working hours.
The leaders of the company had to acknowledge this after showing evidence that certified the aforementioned.
The company responded to all this in the following way: "We would like to be able to solve it as soon as possible, we do not know how, but we will try to find the solutions."
This statement was published minutes after the tweet by Mark Pocan, who is a representative of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin, where he was in charge of accusing the company of not giving its employees the primary rights of being human. To this tweet the e-commerce giant responded "An apology is owed to Representative Pocan."
A first union at Amazon
All this has led the company to carry out a vote count for what will be the creation of the company's first union, which has meant a problem for the multinational. It should be noted that if the Retail, Wholesale and Large Stores Union are to have the expected success, it would be a victory for the movement supported by Joe Biden and company.
Currently this company has around 950,000 employees in the United States, in the last year it has hired at least 400,000 workers.
Work overload
According to the testimonies of some of the company's workers and the evidence collected, the practice of urinating in plastic bottles was widespread in the different departments of the company, said reason for carrying out this act was due to pressure from be able to comply with the work quotas that were established by their bosses. It was also possible to hear testimonies of employees who had to defecate in bags because they did not have time to go to a bathroom.
One of the most listened to testimonies was that of Halie Marie Brown, a 26-year-old woman who worked as a driver of the company and said that this situation occurs due to the obligation to distribute all the packages in the established work time, of which otherwise you would be losing your job.
To all these accusations, Amazon responded as follows: “We are completely clear that drivers can and do have problems finding a bathroom while making their routes, often due to traffic or rural routes. These cases also increased during the Covid-19 pandemic, where most of the public toilets were closed”.
Likewise, Amazon accepted that this is a very old problem of the company and with which they have had to bear all the time, for which they have ensured they want to solve and try to find the best way to do it.
