Amazon apologizes, says ‘peeing in bottles thing’ is de facto a thing for its drivers
Sarah Tew/CNET
The “peeing in bottles thing” is, truly real, Amazon acknowledged Friday, because it issued a public apology for a tweet from its Amazon News story that suggested tales about its drivers urinating in bottles while working are bogus.
“You execute now doubtlessly no longer think the peeing in bottles thing, enact you? If that had been real, no one would work for us,” the company had acknowledged in that customary, March 24 tweet, which became once a response to a tweet from congressional Glean. Impress Pocan. Pocan’s tweet had acknowledged, “Paying workers $15/hr would no longer execute you a ‘innovative place of work’ if you union-bust & execute workers urinate in water bottles.”
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After being called out about its customary tweet, Amazon recanted it unhurried Friday, saying in a weblog submit that the tweet became once “unsuitable” and that it owed an apology to Pocan.
“All of us know that drivers can and enact hold trouble discovering restrooms thanks to web page traffic or now and again rural routes,” the company acknowledged in the submit, “and this has been especially the case real thru Covid when many public restrooms had been closed.”
The apology would possibly maybe maybe well signal that the company is having second thoughts a couple of spate of surprisingly aggressive tweets it fired off closing month. Amazon made headlines in March with snarky tweets directed at Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. After Vermont’s Sanders acknowledged he’d plod to Alabama in the final days of a union vote at an Amazon warehouse there, the company’s chief of user operations fired wait on on Twitter.
Learn more: Amazon on edge: What’s in the wait on of its snark-tweeting of Sanders and Warren
“I welcome @SenSanders to Birmingham and like his push for a innovative place of work,” Amazon exec Dave Clark tweeted on March 24. “I veritably hiss we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, however that’s now no longer moderately real because we undoubtedly bring a innovative place of work.”
The morose tweets regarded as lawmakers in the US and in assorted places are investigating Amazon and assorted Colossal Tech companies over what critics hold charged are anticompetitive practices. The companies face attainable law that would power them to rupture up their companies or otherwise weaken their energy. Amazon can also be facing the prospect of a unionized crew amid accusations that it mistreats its workers. And critics hold acknowledged Amazon would no longer pay enough taxes despite the truth that its founder, Jeff Bezos, is with out doubt one of the indispensable richest other folks in the realm.
In its apology Friday, Amazon acknowledged the lavatory-rupture field affects drivers for assorted provide services too, as smartly as drivers for crawl-hailing companies. “Whatever the truth that this is industry-extensive, we would possibly maybe maybe well utilize to solve it. We execute now no longer yet know the device, however will look for alternate choices,” Amazon acknowledged in its submit.
The company has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and others this yr over AI-geared up cameras place in in Amazon trucks to video show drivers and be sure their identities. A company program for disciplining provide drivers, which surfaced all around the time Amazon’s plans for the cameras emerged, reportedly talked about “public urination” among actionable offenses. Some drivers hold acknowledged they apprehension the camera program will enlarge strain on them to work even sooner and lead to punishment for behaviors which would possibly maybe maybe well be laborious to capture away from below intense time constraints. Amazon has acknowledged the cameras are meant completely as a security measure, with assessments exhibiting indispensable decreases in issues bask in accidents and distracted driving.
More info: Amazon drivers have to consent to biometric monitoring or lose jobs, reports hiss
In its apology submit Friday, Amazon also acknowledged the customary tweet “wrongly centered handiest on our success facilities.” In 2018, an creator went undercover at an Amazon success center in Britain and alleged that workers there urinated in bottles for apprehension that customary lavatory breaks would possibly maybe maybe well designate them their job. Amazon disputed that claim. In its Friday submit, the company acknowledged success center workers can capture lavatory breaks on every occasion they opt to.
“A traditional Amazon success center has dozens of restrooms, and workers are ready to step away from their work space at any time,” the company acknowledged in the submit. “If any employee in a success center has a assorted expertise, we wait on them to insist to their manager and we’ll work to repair it.”