Amazon issues 13,000 disciplinary complaints at single US warehouse

 Amazon Union (ALU) organizer Gerald Bryson hears union vote results as ALU members celebrate their official victory outside the NLRB office in Brooklyn, New York City, U.S., April 1, 2022 Address the media. REUTERS/Brendan Keder Mead.

NEW YORK, July 12 (Reuters) - Amazon employee Gerald Bryson has been taking a manual count for three days when his manager showed him a "supportive feedback document". Thousands of items in warehouse inventory.

The 2018 report said Bryson made 22 mistakes, including counting 19 products in a bin that actually had 20. If Bryson made six such mistakes in a year, he would be fired by Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) at one of its largest U.S. warehouses, the release said.

Internal Amazon documents (not previously reported) show how the company regularly measures employee performance in detail and warns those who are even slightly underperforming — sometimes before the end of their shift. In the year ended April 2020, the company instituted more than 13,000 so-called "disciplines" in Bryson's camp alone, a lawyer for Amazon said in court filings. The plant had about 5,300 employees at the time.

Records and interviews with current and former employees show Amazon's front-line workers are under intense pressure to do their jobs accurately and quickly as the company demands -- creating an environment where unions are nationwide, some workers told Reuters efforts have been boosted. In March, Bryson's workplace voted to become Amazon's first organized warehouse in the U.S., with employees at more than 100 other facilities across the country scrambling to scramble, according to the Amazon Union, an independent task force formed in April 2021. to follow suit.

Amazon, the nation's largest online retailer, disclosed the records in response to a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint about Bryson's April 2020 firing. Many of those filings are also included in another ongoing lawsuit in federal court in which the NLRB seeks to block what it calls Amazon's "blatantly unfair labor practices" -- practices the company has denied in court filings.

In a statement, Amazon said the goals set were "fair and based on what the majority of the team actually achieved." The company said it gave employees more praise than criticism. "We provide employees with extensive feedback throughout the year to help them succeed and ensure they understand expectations," Amazon said.

Kathy Drew King, regional director of the NLRB's Brooklyn office, said the board is "actively working to ensure Amazon's compliance with labor laws."

An administrative justice judge ordered Bryson's reinstatement in April after finding he had unlawfully fired him for protesting workplace safety conditions. Amazon is appealing the judge's decision and said in a statement that the company fired Bryson for defaming a colleague during a demonstration in a warehouse parking lot. The employee verbally assaulted him, Bryson said.

Bryson, now a union organizer, added that he wasn't sure if he would return. "If I go back to these doors, it will show the workers that they can fight," he said.

Amazon told a judge in the Bryson case that it could not meet the NLRB's subpoena request to issue thousands of disciplinary sanctions to employees this year, calling it "too onerous."

However, it provided statistics on so-called "discipline" -- including firings, suspensions and warnings -- at three camps and turned over dozens of personnel files. This includes more than 600 positive, negative or neutral dismissals of workers between 2015 and 2021. The records do not indicate whether these communications were a representative sample of company feedback. The records also include employee affidavits and email exchanges between Amazon and government attorneys.

In a documented breach, Amazon charged employees with:

* A six-minute off work in June 2018 resulted in a warehouse worker in Carteret, N.J. receiving a reprimand at 2:57 a.m. on the same shift.

* Achieve 94% of company productivity goals instead of 100%. A worker at the same warehouse in New Jersey has been beating expectations for weeks. But Amazon management warned him in October 2017 that he could be fired if he didn't increase the speed at which he scans and authenticates items, which dropped to 164 per hour, below a target of about 175.

* Rest time is more than four minutes. The New Jersey worker, who was hit by productivity hits, also received a letter in March 2017 telling him not to exceed the deadline, despite Amazon offering a "5-minute walk grace period" for breaks.

* Four times during a week in spring 2019, an item ordered by a shopper failed to fetch, with a New York warehouse worker picking more than 15,800 items correctly for a customer.

In a statement, Amazon said the attributions did not accurately reflect its current policies. In a June 2021 blog post, the company said it had begun averaging employees' "free time" -- inactive time -- over an extended period of time before contacting them. It was not specified how the deadline was extended. Amazon admits that some managers mistakenly resorted to discipline rather than "coaching" employees.

According to Amazon's statement to Reuters, less than 25 percent of the feedback was related to so-called "opportunities for improvement," most of which were related to attendance, such as B. when employees had the potential to exceed their allotted vacation time.

Reuters was unable to verify the figures as there is no full record of the company's communications.

However, Amazon's own raw numbers for "disciplines" cited in court filings suggest they are productive. As of December 2020, the management of a warehouse in Robbinsville, N.J., had an average of about 4,200 employees, and employees were disciplined more than 15,000 times in the year ended April 2020, Amazon's lawyers wrote. A warehouse in North Haven, Connecticut employed an average of 4,800 people as of December 2020, with more than 5,000 such notices issued in the year to April 2020. Some employees were personally subject to multiple disciplinary actions.

Although Bryson says he did his best to meet Amazon's standards, a slew of important notifications has been haunting Bryson. He joined the Staten Island warehouse shortly after it opened in 2018, with a starting salary of $16.50 an hour. His job was to use a pistol-shaped scanner to count the screws, bolts and other inventory from container to container.

After being first warned wrong in writing, Bryson said he slowed down to count correctly. On December 6 of that year, he was charged with counting 295 shipments per hour, compared with the company's estimate of 478. He told Reuters he was trying to double his speed to make up for a day of sluggishness and was distressed by his performance at the kitchen table.

"You're sitting there worrying about whether there's a job tomorrow because you're not being paid as much as it should be. It's horrible," recalls Bryson, 59.

He received two more articles this month, although his rate accelerated to 371 per hour, Amazon documents show. Bryson said he just kept "counting, moving, counting, moving" and was hit again by misattribution. Ultimately, in January 2019, he flipped through nearly 8,000 items in four days—fast and accurate enough to earn Amazon accolades.

"Your recent job performance has met or exceeded productivity expectations," he was told.

But his feet were swollen and his body ached, Bryson said, adding that he felt like he was "1,000 years old" walking from his car to his apartment after get off work.

Workers have flocked to the big-box retailer in recent years, and their wages have generally been higher than those of its biggest rivals. To hire in a tight job market, Amazon said last September it raised the average starting salary for workers in its U.S. operations to more than $18 an hour, about 10 percent higher than the average wage at Walmart, the largest private company in the U.S., at the time. Company, was offered an employer..

But at least two employees said in court filings that the job took an emotional toll. Roshawn Heslop, a marine clerk in North Haven, said pressure prompted him to lash out at him in November 2019 after a manager confronted him about his departure. "I'm doing my damn job," Heslop said, according to a human resources summary of the incident. According to personnel records, the manager was skeptical of Heslop's explanation that he went to get the tools.

According to human resources records, Heslop said he was generally "a quiet guy" who "worked here" and took occasional walks for health reasons. The manager sent HR 3 emails urging the company to discipline Heslop for his foul language, which the company eventually did. He is on probation and could be fired if he doesn't meet the requirements.

Amazon said the attribution was unusual, but that "respect for each other is important, and we will not tolerate inappropriate behavior at any level."

Heslop, 28, who still works at Amazon, said the company doesn't even respect employees like him.

"It doesn't matter how much I work or how well I work," he said. "It's a game you can't win."

💌 Resources and references: reuters.com 🔊 Amazon issues 13,000 disciplinary notices in one US warehouse.