Amazon Warehouse Workers Want to Be Paid for Waiting in Line

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**daedalus**

Amazingly, by most accounts.

**SagesStone**

Howard A Treesong wrote:
I don't see why your employer should be allowed to hold you beyond the shift hours you are being paid for. Half hour is unacceptable. The solution is to drop the security or extend shift hours to include leeway for security checks they wish to put into place.

Some jobs here actually pay their workers for the time it takes to travel to a shift if they get assigned one in a more inconvenient location if I remember right. It's not they need to extend shift hours, doing so would actually be really bad as the employer could use that time to give them less hours overall. They should be compensated if they're waiting for a significant amount of time though.

**MrMoustaffa**

Breotan wrote:
Were you searched on your way out?

If the thing went off? Absolutely.

And if it went off, say goodbye to your 15. Hell, you could lose most of a lunch break waiting for the security officers to wave the wand over you to make sure you were clean.

**mitch_rifle**

I remember from some studies on the news that this is a fairly big problem in australia. Something like companies owed somewhere in the range of billions of dollars for unpaid work

**BlaxicanX**

Disappointed by the lack of "muh bootstraps" and "if the workers don't like it they can quit" comments in here.

I thought you loved me, Dakka.

**eskimo**

Amazon are scum. Only slightly more than other companies, but still scum.

The scanning is a joke. There are a few ways to steal from them. Hell you don't even have to work for them. Order, receive, complain you didn't get your order, free item.

**whembly**

BlaxicanX wrote:
Disappointed by the lack of "muh bootstraps" and "if the workers don't like it they can quit" comments in here.

I thought you loved me, Dakka.

Hey...I'm one of those "muh bootstraps" crowd...

But, Amazom is taking advantage here... those workers should be paid for complying with company policy.

**Easy E**

I'm taking a wild guess and assuming these people aren't unionized.

**LordofHats**

Easy E wrote:
I'm taking a wild guess and assuming these people aren't unionized.

Amazon fires you if you even say the word union

Amazon.com actively opposed union organizing drives in both the United States and the UK.

In the Fall of 2000, a group calling itself “Day2@Amazon.com/WashTech,” with later affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, began to a campaign to unionize the employees of Amazon.com, starting in Seattle. Amazon.com opposed the union organizing campaign in the U.S. in the Fall of 2000 with everything from distributing anti-union propaganda to offering “reduced phone shifts and free massages” for employees, before it simply laid off 1,300 workers, 850 of which were in Seattle, blaming the layoffs on the decline of the dot.com economy. Many though by no means all of the states that the company has since expanded to are “right to work” states where it is much more difficult for workers to join a labor union.

In the UK in 2001, Amazon.com hired a U.S.-based union-busting firm, The Burke Group, whose aggressive tactics successfully scared warehouse employees in Milton Keynes from unionizing, while four outspoken union supporters claimed they were illegally fired for their activism. According to one researcher who wrote about the “Union Avoidance Industry in the United States,” the “Graphical Print and Media Union (GPMU) [in the UK] stated that the company [Amazon] had mounted the most aggressive union avoidance campaign it had ever encountered, accusing it of sacking one union activist and committing other illegal practices.”

Those who have likely suffered most the costs of Amazon.com’s opposition to labor unions are its temporary employees in its warehouses and distribution centers. In the UK, newspapers have reported that Amazon.com has threatened to fire its 7-day-a-week employees if they call in sick, and has cut short the shifts of its nighttime employees without notice in the middle of their shifts and hours before public transportation has resumed, leaving temp workers stranded over the night. In the U.S., a former Nevada distribution center employee, Richard Austin, has filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Amazon.com skims time from its employees’ hours in order to keep from paying them legally required overtime wages.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/trevorgriffey/2011/04/03/top-10-reasons-to-avoid-amazon-com/

**MrMoustaffa**

They don't really hide it either. If I remember correctly on the application one of the main rules for working there was that you would NOT join or attempt to form a union. It was listed alongside stuff like "don't steal" and "don't sexually harass others". It was a fire able offense in their eyes, and they did not hesitate to tell you so.

**Jihadin**

Unions are not after those individuals to form one?

**LordofHats**

Jihadin wrote:
Unions are not after those individuals to form one?

Advocates have tried to form unions with Amazon employees but have maintained the claim that Amazon uses firings and scare tactics to intimidate its employees. For example, the incident in Seattle, where they just fired over a thousand people because Union advocates were pushing really hard. They said it was because of the .com bubble, but everyone knows that's BS as amazon came out of the .com bubble stronger than ever.

**Crablezworth**

There was a walmart in quebec that unionized, wal-mart shut it down in the blink of an eye.

**Dreadclaw69**

LordofHats wrote:
Amazon fires you if you even say the word union

When they have their thought crimes unit up and running they'll fire you for thinking it

**LordofHats**

Dreadclaw69 wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
Amazon fires you if you even say the word union

When they have their thought crimes unit up and running they'll fire you for thinking it

Google and Amazon are in on it together. Google Glasses is just step one. Once they're at Google Eyes, then it'll be Google Brain, and then there will be nothing but Google!*

*Hysterical rant based on paranoia that Google secretly wants to take over the world.

**Blackhoof**

Sickening that union-busting like that is even legal in a western nation these days. Absolutely absurd and depressing.

**Howard A Treesong**

According to the UK government site, an employer is not allowed to demand you leave or change unions, offer inducements or threats to change Union, discrimination on the basis of Union membership is also illegal. Simply, a contract that says you promise never to join a union should be illegal in the UK, so Amazon shouldn't get away with it here.

Everyone should be allowed the option to join a union. It's disgusting that companies in western countries are allowed to get away with these sorts of tactics.

I don't believe you have to tell you employer you are a member of a Union, you certainly don't in the UK. I suggest Amazon employees do it anyway and not them.

**Frazzled**

timetowaste85 wrote:
If they're being held and prevented from going home from work at a work location, that totally counts!! Give them the pay.

Agreed. I thought this was pretty settled law?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:
Dreadclaw69 wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
Amazon fires you if you even say the word union

When they have their thought crimes unit up and running they'll fire you for thinking it

Google and Amazon are in on it together. Google Glasses is just step one. Once they're at Google Eyes, then it'll be Google Brain, and then there will be nothing but Google!*

*Hysterical rant based on paranoia that Google secretly wants to take over the world.

Wait thats a secret?

**Jihadin**

Frazzled wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
If they're being held and prevented from going home from work at a work location, that totally counts!! Give them the pay.

Agreed. I thought this was pretty settled law?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordofHats wrote:
Dreadclaw69 wrote:
LordofHats wrote:
Amazon fires you if you even say the word union

When they have their thought crimes unit up and running they'll fire you for thinking it

Google and Amazon are in on it together. Google Glasses is just step one. Once they're at Google Eyes, then it'll be Google Brain, and then there will be nothing but Google!*

*Hysterical rant based on paranoia that Google secretly wants to take over the world.

Wait thats a secret?

Its what the cats want you to think

**Spacemanvic**

What a bunch of BS.

If youre being detained that long, you should get paid. Try showing up for work a half hour late or leave a half hour early and see if you dont get docked.