Amazon is sorry for tweeting about peeing. The company apologized in a late Friday blog post for a tweet it sent to a congressman more than a week ago denying that its employees work so hard they must urinate in empty water bottles. It also admitted that some delivery drivers might have had to urinate in bottles and it vowed to improve their working conditions. The matter was first raised March 24 by Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who responded to a tweet by an Amazon executive that said the company was a progressive workplace. “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles,” Pocan said in his tweet. Amazon responded: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”
In the Friday night blog post, Amazon apologized to Pocan and acknowledged that delivery drivers “can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes.” The online shopping giant said COVID-19 has made the issue worse, since many public restrooms are closed. “Sigh,” Pocan responded in a Saturday morning tweet. “This is not about me, this is about your workers—who you don’t treat with enough respect or dignity.” Amazon wrote in its blog post that urinating in bottles is an industry-wide problem. To try and prove its point, it shared links to news articles about drivers for other delivery companies who have had to do so. “Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it,” the company said. “We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions.”
via courthousenews: Amazon Apologizes to Congressman for Bogus ‘Peeing’ Tweet
siehe auch_ DOCUMENTS SHOW AMAZON IS AWARE DRIVERS PEE IN BOTTLES AND EVEN DEFECATE EN ROUTE, DESPITE COMPANY DENIAL. If employees actually had to pee in bottles, Amazon said, “nobody would work for us.” That’s a lie. IN ANTICIPATION OF Sen. Bernie Sanders’s scheduled trip to Bessemer, Alabama, to support the unionization drive by Amazon workers there, Amazon executive Dave Clark cast the $1 trillion behemoth as “the Bernie Sanders of employers” and taunted: “So if you want to hear about $15 an hour and health care, Senator Sanders will be speaking downtown. But if you would like to make at least $15 an hour and have good health care, Amazon is hiring.” Rep. Mark Pocan replied via tweet: “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a progressive workplace when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles,” echoing reports from 2018 that Amazon workers were forced to skip bathroom breaks and pee in bottles. Amazon’s denial was swift: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”