Amazon is Paying Employees to Make Positive Tweets about its Working Conditions

Amazon just created a group of “ambassadors” to show just how awesome it is to work in their fulfilment centers. These FC ambassadors use their twitter handles to praise their glorious working environment and answer questions about the company from Twitter users. The goal or this stunt is to change the negative image Amazon has gained regarding the treatment of its warehouse workers.

https://twitter.com/AmazonFCPhil/status/1030490786687864837

Amazon has faced backlash in the past over the working conditions on their warehouses. The employees with the most pressure are the ones responsible for processing items for shipping, or “pickers” as they are called. Pickers are tasked with picking up a package from their bins, scanning them, and sending the packets off for shipping. The scanner tracks the amount of time between each scan. Workers were expected to meet a quota of scanned items per hour, also known as targets.

The sheer amount of targets workers had to meet gave them little breathing room. Failure to miss one's targets would result in a meeting with a manager to discuss their performance and possibly receive penalty points. Receiving enough penalty points could result in termination. Some of them resorted to urinating in trash cans or water bottles out of fear that using the bathroom would take too long.

The addition of the FC Ambassadors does nothing to improve working conditions in Amazon’s fulfilment center. Instead of using its employees to go on twitter and praise the working conditions at the company’s warehouses, the company should focus on making the conditions better instead.