In all the discussion of the millions of jobs that have been lost and will be lost to automation, one point is perhaps not emphasised enough: that in some companies, there already seems to be a notable desire to treat human members of the workforce as robots. How else can Amazon’s long effort to ignore the biological fact of urination be explained?
After an especially grim period of public relations on its part, the ecommerce giant has now apologised for its initial reaction to US Democrat Mark Pocan who dared to suggest that paying US workers $15 (€12.70) an hour wouldn't make Amazon a progressive workplace "when you union-bust and make workers urinate in water bottles".
Amazon’s tweeted clapback went like this: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”
Alas, it has now had to comprehensively revisit this statement in a blog post. “We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed.”
Amazingly, Amazon implied that the reason its social media response had been so aggressive was because it thought Pocan was referring to entirely different reports about workers in fulfilment centres resorting to urinating in bottles because they are not given adequate time for bathroom breaks.
Important clarification
“A typical Amazon fulfilment centre has dozens of restrooms, and employees are able to step away from their work station at any time,” it clarified. “If any employee in a fulfilment centre has a different experience, we encourage them to speak to their manager and we’ll work to fix it.”
Obviously, it is a dark Dickensian day when any employer must acknowledge even the possibility that employees might struggle to access the toilet. And, as any humans left at the top of Amazon will know, this urination narrative has surfaced at a sensitive time, with workers at its centre in Bessemer, Alabama, waiting for a vote count that could create its first unionised facility in the US.
Rest assured, there is nothing that sends management in search of an unblocked loo faster than the idea that somebody, somewhere is unionising.
