Tell Congress: "Protect Amazon workers and bring an end to Amazon’s dangerous surveillance practices now!"
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John,
Earlier this week Amazon held their annual Prime Day event.
While many in the business community celebrate this day as a crowning achievement of corporate America, they completely disregard what makes this day possible, a dystopian workplace surveillance system that contributes to workers getting injured at two times the industry average.
Amazon created this punishing system to increase workers’ speed or rate and to control their physical movements in increments of seconds, a metric called time off task (TOT). Rate/TOT determines if there are enough seconds to use the bathroom, for handwashing per COVID-19 guidelines, or for workers to practice social distancing on their way to fulfill an order.
While Amazon claims that they use this information to "monitor workflow" in reality, they use mass surveillance to control and discipline workers, even determining when or if they can use the restroom.
Amazon has repeatedly used this data to retaliate against workers who speak out and organize—particularly Black workers who spoke out to protect their colleagues and communities during the pandemic.
Congress must propose legislation that will end workplace surveillance like Rate/TOT and hold hearings to investigate Amazon’s abusive treatment of workers.
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It has been shown that numerous injuries are caused by repetitive motions, systematic work processes, and surveillance-driven speed-focused work. Amazon relies heavily on all of these tactics in its warehouses and it's why there was a record 24,000 serious injuries at Amazon facilities last year.
When seeing what it is truly like inside an Amazon warehouse, you find worker abuse and mass surveillance used to retaliate against any workers that try to improve workplace conditions.
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Together, we can stand up against dangerous corporations like Amazon.
- Tre
Tre Graves
Campaign Organizer
Democracy for America
