Amazon UK criticised over ‘terrible’ working conditions

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Jun 1, 2018

The UK arm of Amazon has been accused of “terrible conditions” at its warehouses after an investigation by trade union GMB claims to have revealed an elevated number of ambulance callouts, amongst other incidents.

GMB Union claimed on Friday that Amazon was treating staff 'like robots' at its warehouses, where goods are received, sorted and shipped. This was based on a series of Freedom of Information Requests submitted to ambulance services across Britain, which showed that ambulances had been called out 600 times to 14 Amazon warehouses in the last three financial years. In more than half of those cases, patients were taken to hospital.

Meanwhile, ambulances were called 115 times to Amazon’s Rugeley site during the past three years. There were call-outs for pregnancy or maternity problems, major trauma, electrocution, unconsciousness, buildings on fire and chest pains, according to GMB, who noted that there were eight call outs to a similar sized supermarket distribution warehouse a few miles away during the same period.

Meanwhile, a survey of GMB members employed at Amazon suggested that 87% of Amazon warehouse staff are in either 'constant' or 'occasional' pain due to their workload.

Mick Rix, GMB national officer, said: “We really hoped Amazon had learnt its lesson from the report we published in 2014. Sadly that does not appear to be the case. Hundreds of ambulance call outs, pregnant women telling us they are forced to stand for ten hours a day, pick, stow, stretch and bend, pull heavy carts and walk miles – even miscarriages and pregnancy issues at work."

However, a spokesman for Amazon told The Guardian that it was “simply not correct to suggest that we have unsafe working conditions based on this data or on unsubstantiated anecdotes. Requests for ambulance services at our fulfilment centres are predominantly associated with personal health events and are not work related. Nevertheless, ambulance visits at our UK fulfilment centres last year was 0.00001 per worked hour, which is dramatically low.”

The e-commerce company has 16 warehouses in the UK, including 12 in England, 3 in Scotland and 1 in Wales.