Amazon’s labour relations

Posted on December 1, 2008 in Uncategorized

10 years of Amazon.co.uk ‡ Amazon’s labour relations ‡ Amazon’s relationship with publishers

The distribution centre had a high staff turnover during the years, until the time came when I was one of the few left from the original Slough staff. Labour relations have never been one of Amazon’s strong points. During the time I was there, Amazon successfully fought off one attempt at unionisation. Billy Bragg even offered his support for the Amazon workers, and while I sympathised with many of the complaints, I thought an article in the Guardian had hindered rather than helped the cause, as it contained many of the paper’s customary inaccuracies. In 2001, Amazon hired the consultancy firm the Marston Gate 3 Burke Group to successfully fight off an attempt at unionisation from the Graphical Print and Media Union. However, a current Facebook group ("Amazon’s associates, fight for your pay rise…") and a blog indicate that there are some workers at Amazon who are in the process of restarting the unionisation process. An article in November’s edition of the Ethical Consumer stated “the low prices on the Amazon site may not therefore be wholly unconnected with low wages for the staff in its warehouses”. Yet, I must say that I found Amazon’s wages to be quite reasonable – they were certainly far better than those that I received working in a bookshop, and are lot better than many starting wages in Publishing. Despite this, I did suffer the indignity of being present in an all-hands meeting when everyone in the distribution centre was given a rise apart from my department, and it did take a good few years to get that injustice rectified. However, because I stayed so long at Amazon, I did benefit quite a bit from the stock options (although unfortunately for me, this was still a considerable distance from the millionaire status that some of Amazon.com’s first workers supposedly achieved). According to a recent report in the Times, temps at Amazon are only paid £6.30 an hour, and could face the sack if they phone in sick.
The Facebook group quoted above gives an indication of how crazy the Amazon rumour mill could be. It’s hard to say why this is. Perhaps it is because Amazon is forever expanding its range of products, and starting up new business lines, with such innovations being surrounded by a veil of secrecy, to prevent Amazon’s competitors from getting an insight into what they’re going to do next. Maybe this air of secrecy is too pervasive, with management not informing staff of the most mundane of reasons for the implementation of changes. It could be that managers themselves could be under too much pressure – I can recall a rather unpleasant run-in I had with senior European management, which gave me an insight into the Marston Gate 4 rather disappointingly trivial office politics and point-scoring that could occur at that level. I had the good fortune to work with some really great managers at Amazon, but there were some that were not so great… For instance, one manager has inadvisably written into the above Facebook group to say “You’re all scum! Get back to work and you might get a pay rise………. Either that or leave if you don’t like it!” Working in a warehouse may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and I remember that conditions in the Marston Gate distribution centre was not great in its first year of operation, as in the Summer, it was too hot, and in the Winter, it was so freezing that you had to wear gloves if you were sitting down at your desk, which made it a bit difficult to type comprehensibly. Amazon’s management brought in electric heaters to combat this, with a result that a coat left too near the heaters caught fire. However, I do remember one manager rather sarcastically bringing a thermometer into the distribution centre when someone complained that it was too cold to be legally operating. At one point, a Communications Manager was hired to improve relations between management and staff, but it’s evident that a “Them and Us” culture still pervades at Amazon to this day.