Quotas announced every wednesday. The minimum rates are determined each week based on the 80th percentile of performers in the previous week; In other words, the bottom fifth of the workers had to increase their productivity to avoid being reprimanded, which is called “feedback” in company parlance. As the employee handbook warns, a worker will be recommended for termination if he receives six reactions per year.
During one 12-week period, from March 7 to May 30, 2018, according to internal price data reviewed by BuzzFeed News, hourly processing quotas increased for 37 of the 93 jobs in Poznan warehouses, including from 104 items to 116 items for juniors. / Medium item fillers, 107 to 120 for small item pickers, 269 to 322 for small item store, and 472 to 500 for sorting in rebin. Minimum rates fell for only four jobs.
“Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazon citizen—whether a corporate employee or a fulfillment center participant—and we measure actual performance against those expectations,” Eichenseher said. “The vast majority of our employees achieve their goals easily.”
From the start, Amazon workers in Poland have to compete with their colleagues to keep their jobs. Applicants looking for entry-level assistant jobs in Pozna or Wroclaw on Amazon are redirected to temporary agencies, which supply the company with starting workers on one-month contracts. In Poland, 39% of “low-status” workers are employed through temporary agencies, three times the rate in Germany. Temporary workers who complete three consecutive one-month subcontracts, which is the maximum under Polish law, get a chance at a one-year full-time contract with health insurance and other company benefits, as long as they do so during a three-month trial period during which a company can Amazon legally dismissed them for any reason. Those who are retained at the end of their one-year contract graduate to a permanent contract, which offers further protection against termination, as required by EU regulations limiting employment use for a fixed term.
Fellows experienced in perennial contracts learn to maintain a pace of barely a week’s quota to help reduce their growth. Two workers said some are organizing informal competitions over who can get close to the bottom line without falling. But those on short-term contracts, who make up more than half of Poznan’s warehouse staff for a few months, don’t know what rate they need to reset when the end date comes — only that Amazon will keep an unspecified number of top performers among them, based on the latest shipping forecast.
“I try to work at 150% because I know they won’t extend my contract if I don’t,” said a female worker in Pozna on a short-term contract, who declined to be named because she was afraid of losing her job for speaking out. . “They really tire us out.”
In 2018, the country’s national labor inspectorate, known by the Polish acronym PIP, ordered a test to measure the energy spent by Amazon workers. Officials from PIP’s Ergonomics Research Department in Gdansk arrived in Pozna on June 20; Over two days, they attached workers at five stations to a device called the MWE-1 meter, a rubber mask attached to a tube machine that measures breathing to calculate calories burned during a shift. Similar tests are scheduled at other facilities across the country. Overall, the agency aims to measure energy levels at 11 different jobs in Amazon warehouses.
Jobs that burn at least 1,500 calories in men or 1,000 calories in women are classified as “heavy” and require certain conditions under Polish labor laws: night shifts cannot be longer than eight hours, and employers must provide a free meal At least one, and workers must have at least 11 hours of rest time between shifts. Amazon claimed, based on its own measurements, that none of its jobs were heavy.
By the time of the inspection by the inspectorate in June 2018, Amazon’s Pozna and Wroclaw warehouses had already undergone at least one energy metering each, based on court orders linked to wrongful termination complaints. Conducted by Envilab, a private research laboratory, the tests determined that 18 of the 20 jobs measured in Wroclaw on April 27, 2015, and nine of the 36 jobs measured in Poznan on April 12, 2018, were classified as heavy. A woman in the Repina department in Pozna spent 1,068 calories, a man in the storage department in Wroclaw, and assistants in the triage team in both warehouses over 1,600. By law, the results can be used as evidence in individual court cases but not for any wider application. against company practices.
Inspectorate testing found higher levels. Of the 11 jobs evaluated, seven were rated heavy, which the agency said “exceeded permissible standards” in a 10-hour night shift. The rebin factor scored 2087 calories, while the fill factor scored 3056.
Danuta Rutkowska, a spokesperson for the National Labor Inspectorate, told BuzzFeed News that “Amazon representatives are showing a willingness to cooperate,” but the agency has no evidence that the company has addressed the energy spending issue. “This issue remains an area of further interest for PIP,” Rutkowska said.
Amazon offered a different view of the inspection body’s findings. “We do not agree with the assessment made by PIP,” a company spokesman said. “As of today, there are no workplaces where energy expenditure has been exceeded.”
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