In a single year ending April 2020, Amazon issued more than 13,000 so-called “disciplines” at the company’s warehouse on Staten Island, which at the time employed about 5,300 people.
Although the documents were filed in court papers by a lawyer representing Amazon, they cemented the position of current and former Amazon employees who criticized the enormous pressure to complete tasks as accurately and quickly as the company requires.
For aggrieved Amazon workers, these problems are part of the reason that fuels union efforts across the country.
In March, Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse voted to become the company’s first organized warehouse in the United States.
In response to the company’s work ethic, Amazon said its goals are “fair and based on what the majority of the team is actually accomplishing.”
“We give a lot of feedback to employees throughout the year to help them succeed and make sure they understand expectations,” Amazon said, adding that the company gives employees more praise to workers than criticism.
Amazon acknowledged that the disciplinary action did not reflect its current policies correctly, and in a June 2021 blog post, the company claimed that it had begun calculating the “time off tasks” of workers, also known as periods of inactivity over an extended period of time, before engaging with employees.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.