Not too many Americans are aware that Amazon runs such tight timetables for its delivery drivers, that drivers reportedly sometimes have to urinate in bottles on the road.

Few have learned how many workers at Amazon feel like replaceable cogs in the machine in the wheels of progress and efficiency.

Christopher Smalls, who was the main catalyst for the unionization of at JFK8, Amazon’s largest Staten Island warehouse, is among a growing chorus of voices for fair labor treatment at one of America’s largest employers. Amazon is not alone, of course. There is a growing movement among various Starbucks retail outlets to unionize, as well.

Amazon is not going down without a fight. It claims Smalls and the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) strong-armed its workers to vote for the union, and it is asking the U.S. National Labor Relations Board to toss the vote out.

Nonetheless, from controversial restrictions on Amazon employee chat groups, to damning new reports on employee pay, news on unfair employee treatment Amazon, are growing—and people are beginning to take notice. The President of the United States is one such person, with President Biden telling the North American Building Trades Union conference, “The choice to join a union belongs to workers alone. By the way, Amazon, here we come.”

Amazon’s management has long heard calls for higher wages, and at the first warehouse to unionize, wages start at $18.25 an hour. Organizer Christian Smalls says that hourly wage is insufficient, telling NPR: “Most of these workers have a second job, or they still get government assistance. We need to raise the bar higher, especially when you're talking about one of the richest retailers in the world that can afford to do it."

Internal App, Pay Concerns

If employees are trying to build on momentum after the unionization vote, corporate management has other plans.

In an almost dystopian example, Amazon plans to “block and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app” in a pilot program planned for this month, The Intercept reports. Hot-button words like “union,” “pay raise,” “slave labor” and “injustice” are said to be forbidden on the platform. Even the word “restroom” will reportedly be blocked, likely due to the reports Amazon has delivery drivers sometimes urinate in bottles because of the company’s time restraints on their routes.

In response to reports over the restrictions on the internal messaging app, Amazon spokesperson Barbara Agrait said in a statement, “Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” further adding that the program “has not been approved yet,” and that the app “may even never launch at all.”

Nonetheless, a litany of other controversies have piled up for Amazon, with The Wall Street Journal now reporting that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is planning to investigate Amazon’s use of third-party data.

Additionally, data from corporate review site Glassdoor finds Amazon has been paying interns almost three times as high as delivery drivers, with the median employee making as much as $8,000 a month, compared to the starting salary for warehouse employees at $18 an hour, according to the Washington Examiner.

Harsh Working Environment?

Unionization disputes and employee pay are not the only criticisms leveled at the company. Amazon was hit with a wrongful death lawsuit in December after an Illinois man, Austin McEwen, died alongside five other employees when a tornado hit Amazon’s Edwardsville facility. McEwen’s family has since sued the corporation, with the victim’s mother on Jan. 17, 2022, alleging management “carelessly required individuals…to continue working up until moments before the tornado struck.”

When two Amazon employees died within hours at a Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse, the company made headlines again in December 2021. One of the workers died from experiencing a stroke after being denied unpaid time off from HR, warehouse employee Isiah Thomas told More Perfect Union, a workers’ rights group. Amazon officially disputes Thomas’ account, calling the claims false.

Amazon worker Perry Connelly told Mashable that to Amazon management, workers are just “a body. Once that body’s used up, they’ll just bring in someone else and do the work.”

Last June, the BBC reported that a coalition called the Strategic Organizing Center, made up of four labor unions including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), found in a study that Amazon workers had 5.9 serious injuries per 100 people. The overall injury rate at Amazon was found to be 6.5 per 100 employees, more than double the 3 per 100 employees injured at Walmart.

The study on injuries at Amazon comes in the context of a 2020 leak of pamphlets from an Amazon warehouse in Tulsa. As part of its “WorkingWell” program, the company-issued pamphlet states that “some positions will walk up to 13 miles a day…[others] will have a total of 20,000 lb (pounds) lifted before they complete their shift.”

Improvements, Yet Frustrations Remain

Despite the many controversies, Amazon has committed to safety improvements for its employees and has pledged to pay all U.S. employees more than $15 an hour. As part of its Career Choice program, the company has even announced it will fund full college tuition for 750,000 employees, as well as help fund the cost of classes and books for employees seeking a college or general education development (GED) high-school equivalent degree.

Part of Amazon's current push to recruit and retain high school graduates, in fact, is its tuition reimbursement and 401(k) retirement savings plan.

However, for the many Amazon workers living paycheck to paycheck, and especially for the ones unionizing, Amazon’s recent announcementsand business model, may not fully satisfy their frustrations.

David Sirota, a retired psychologist in New York, summarizes conditions at Amazon to The New York Times, thus: “Mr. Bezos is a brilliant businessman, exemplified most clearly in his fierce determination to increase profitability. But his warehouse workers are treated as mindless cogs to that end, ignorant and inert unless monitored, pressured and threatened.”