Amazon fight with workers: 'You're a cog in the system'

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55927024

Joseph Jones doesn't find the gruelling physical demands of his job at Amazon particularly troubling - he can walk as many as 17 miles per shift. The firm's attitude towards his work, however, is something else.

"It's a very adversarial relationship with the supervisors and the staff," says the 35-year-old, who started working part-time at the company's warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama in October. "You're a cog in the system... and it's very obvious."

During the busy season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, for example, he says Amazon required staff to extend their shifts - typically with little notice. Once, he says he didn't even know he had been asked to put in extra time until he arrived for work and the company app informed him he was an hour late.

Last year, the treatment prompted him to join a petition that sought an official vote on creating a union at the warehouse.

In December, state labour officials ruled the request had garnered enough support to warrant an election - the first such vote Amazon has faced in the US since 2014. Ballots were mailed this week.

If the campaign succeeds, the Bessemer facility, which opened in March, would become the only unionised Amazon location in the US.

Read more at the link, it's very long.

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