Union workers have staged the final in a series of protests outside an Amazon warehouse in Doncaster over “unsafe” and “appalling” working conditions. According to the GMB union, workers urinate in plastic bottles rather than go to the toilet during their shifts, and pregnant women are forced to stand for hours on end.
The protest follows international campaigns last week to coincide with the retail giant’s Prime Day promotion, with demonstrations being held outside seven British warehouses – what the company calls “fulfilment centres” – and in seven US cities.
Mick Rix, the GMB’s national officer, said Amazon workers wanted to send a message to Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO, that they were people, not robots. “The conditions our members work under at Amazon sites are appalling. The reports we get from GMB members are horrific and suggest the practices Amazon employed at Doncaster create unsafe work, in comparison to many other warehouse distribution centres,” he said.
He added: “It is time that Jeff Bezos showed empathy with the very people that have helped contribute to his vast and increasing personal fortune.”
The union said targets were so harsh that workers did not want to take time to go to the toilet. A 2018 survey of Amazon warehouse workers in England by the workplace campaigning group Organise found that 74% of people were afraid to go to the toilet for fear of missing productivity targets.
The union said it had had more than one report of women who had had miscarriages at Amazon warehouses while at work.
GMB said it has been told of one case in which a woman had a miscarriage at work and an ambulance was not called and she went home on the bus in bloodstained clothes. Amazon said it had no record of such an incident.
The union also said its research revealed hundreds of ambulance call-outs to Amazon warehouses since 2015-16, and more than 600 reports from Amazon warehouses to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Amazon workers were joined by Jack Dromey MP, the shadow pensions minister, outside the Milton Keynes warehouse on Friday. He pledged to call for a joint health and safety audit of Amazon with the HSE and the GMB union “so no more Amazon workers are injured at work”.
“It’s unacceptable that Amazon workers are subjected to working practices that would shame a 19th-century mill owner while the company makes ever increasing profits and Jeff Bezos gets even richer,” he said.
Demonstrations were also held in last week in Rugeley, Swansea, Peterborough, Warrington and Coventry.
Amazon said workers can use the toilet whenever they want to and that nobody urinates in plastic bottles. It said figures from the HSE show that the company has more than 40% fewer injuries on average than other transportation and warehousing companies in the UK.
An Amazon spokesperson said: “Events like Prime Day have become an opportunity for our critics, including unions, to raise awareness for their cause, in this case, increased membership dues.
“These groups are conjuring misinformation to work in their favour when, in fact, we already offer the things they purport to be their cause – industry-leading pay, benefits and a safe workplace for our employees.”
