Amazon Staff In UK Claims Their Toilet Breaks Were Timed

Staff at Amazon's Coventry warehouse in the UK has claimed that they have to go without toilet breaks. The workers further claimed that they work in "severe" conditions and are constantly monitored, a BBC report said. The workers of the Coventry warehouse recently signed up to join the GMB union and held their first-ever strike on Wednesday over wages and severe working conditions.

The staff are upbraided for "ideal time" lasting just a few minutes. Amazon has a system that recognises great performance," BBC reported.

Two Amazon workers told BBC that the robots in the warehouse "are treated better than us".

Darren Westwood and Garfield Hilton said that the managers asked questions if they took a toilet break.

"The thing with stopping work is that they want to know why," said Mr Hilton. "So if the time is beyond a couple of minutes they can see it on the system."

Mr Hilton shared that he has diabetes and it is not always possible to find toilets close by in the building and the process of locating one and returning can sometimes take upwards of 15 minutes. "They will then question you, 'what were you doing?'"

That's not all, the managers also track staff performance and time.

However, a spokesman for Amazon said: "Performance is only measured when an employee is at their station and logged in to do their job.

"If an employee logs out, which they can do at any time, the performance management tool is paused."

Amazon said 178 of its 2,000 workers at the warehouse had voted to strike, reported Reuters.

The walk-out is just the latest in Britain, which is facing its worst industrial unrest since Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, with staff from key sectors, including nurses and ambulance workers as well as from the railways and the legal profession staging strikes in fights for better pay.

Amazon, which employs 75,000 people across the UK, increased starting pay by 50 pence to a minimum of between 10.50 and 11.45 pounds ($12.95 to $14.12) per hour last year, compared with a minimum wage in Britain that is set to rise to 10.42 in April.
 

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