personal finance

Fines and a frantic life on the road – the lot of Amazon’s harried staff


The accident was the final straw. Mark Wright*, a supervisor at an Amazon depot, had called in a delivery driver to cover an absent colleague’s shift. Depot managers ordered the driver to load his consignment of parcels on the kerbside rather than in the warehouse where loading normally takes place.

As he heaved a large parcel into the van’s side door, he slipped off the kerb and broke his leg. “It was an accident waiting to happen,” says Wright. “I’d told the manager that it was an unsafe place to load, but under Amazon rules if you’re late for work, you’re not allowed to drive into the warehouse and they marked him as late even though he’d only just been given the shift.” The driver was unable to return to work and his pay ceased from the moment he fell. Wright left his job a few weeks later, citing the intolerable demands placed on drivers by the depot rules.

This year Amazon overtook Microsoft to became the world’s most valuable company, worth £634bn, and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is the world’s richest man with a fortune of more than £76.5bn. However, the online giant is accused of profiting on the back of its depot workers, who complain of poor pay, long hours and risky conditions with no employment benefits. Ambulances have been called out to 14 Amazon warehouses 600 times in the past three years according to a freedom of information request by the workers union, GMB, but it says Amazon ignored its request for an independent health and safety review.

The Observer has been contacted by three drivers who have delivered parcels for Amazon. They report shifts of 12 hours or more on zero hours contracts, unpaid overtime and penalties for failing to meet onerous targets. Because they are classed as self-employed, they are obliged to pay for their vehicles and expenses and do not receive sickness or holiday pay. They claim long, unpredictable hours and transport costs mean that pay can amount to less than the minimum wage.

Wright was recruited as a driver by UK Express Logistics, a courier company founded with £1 in capital, which provided drivers for Amazon. The pay was £110 a day regardless of how many hours it took to deliver a consignment. “I was shown an online contract on a mobile phone to read and sign at an induction day and it was only when the paperwork came through that I realised I’d committed to working without pay until I’d clocked up £1,500, which they retained as a deposit,” he says. “Drivers had to rent a van from UK Express for £28 a day, payable seven days a week, even though Amazon capped the working week at five days. We were charged three- or four-figure sums for wear and tear that they considered unreasonable and for punctures and minor dents or scratches.”

Wright, who was later promoted to a supervisor role, was paid by UK Express, but worked exclusively from Amazon depots in Plymouth and Exeter and was subject to depot rules. “Drivers would be given an average of 180 parcels to deliver in a day, and had to load them into their vans within 12 minutes,” he says.

“It could take 12 hours or more to deliver all the parcels because addresses were often long distances apart, the satnavs we were given with our route on were unreliable and if someone wasn’t in you had to make a second attempt, which could mean several long detours at the end of a shift. When the Plymouth depot closed, we had to make the 50-minute drive to Exeter at our own expense to collect and return parcels, and if you returned with more than 5% undelivered, whatever the reason, your pay was docked. This is what tempts drivers to leave parcels on doorsteps or in bins.”

Greg Dawson* was also contracted by UK Express Logistics to work for Amazon. “We were promised we could earn over £1,000 a week and pick and choose our hours. The reality was the work sometimes cost us as much as we earned,” he says.

“When the local depot closed, I and other drivers in the area had to set off at 5am to reach the nearest one by 7am, queue up like a prison line, check in, collect our satnavs – which were called Doras – check our routes, find our parcels that had been picked overnight, load them and go back for the ‘oversize’ boxes while constantly being shouted at by stewards.

“If we exceeded the 12-minute loading time, we were made to leave the site and wait till 9am to finish off. Sometimes you’d get pulled at the exit by security who would make you empty your van to check you hadn’t ‘stolen’ anything.

Drivers wait to pick up parcels on Black Friday at an Amazon fulfilment centre in Dunstable.



Drivers wait to pick up parcels on Black Friday at an Amazon fulfilment centre in Dunstable. Photograph: Tony Margiocchi/Barcroft Images

“I’d get home at 10pm, fall asleep and start all over again at 5am, and unless you sent a photo of your van from all angles to UK Express every week you wouldn’t get paid. If they saw a scratch your money was docked.”

According to Dawson, the length of the routes and the number of parcels made it impossible to complete the job in a nine hour shift. “Sometimes in country lanes you’d lose signal for your Dora and you’d be lost in the middle of nowhere, peeing into a plastic bottle because there was no chance to take a break,” he says.

After eight months as a driver, Dawson suffered a mental breakdown, which he attributes to the stress of the work.

Nuala Biri* answered an ad for Amazon’s own delivery arm, Amazon Flex, when she was made redundant from her job as a care assistant last year. Flex promises £12-£15 an hour for shifts of between one and four hours. Out of that, drivers have to pay for their own vehicle, fuel and expenses, including tolls and congestion charges. Biri says her net pay amounts to £150 a week on average and she has to rely on her family to pay her bills.

“It’s a zero hours contract and when a shift is posted on the app, every driver in the area is also looking at it so it’s just chance whether you get work,” she says. “Some people get their children to be on the app from 7am looking out for jobs while they are doing something else so they don’t miss out.”

Although shifts are advertised as a maximum of four hours, she claims they can take longer as the number of parcels and length of the routes are increasing. Flex drivers are paid overtime, but this year, she says, it was halved to £6.50 an hour which, when fuel and tolls are factored in, can mean working at a loss.

The GMB argues the drivers are legally employees because of the terms of their contracts and should therefore be entitled employment benefits such as paid sick and holiday leave.

Last year, UK Express Logistics and its sister company UK Express Delivery settled out of court as the union brought a case demanding employment rights on behalf of a group of drivers contracted to deliver Amazon parcels. “Amazon relies on zero-hours contracts to avoid employer costs and responsibilities,” says GMB national officer Mick Rix.

UK Express Logistics went into liquidation in February. Its sister company, UK Express Delivery, now trading as EInvoicing is still contracted by Amazon. A spokesperson for the three firms denied that drivers were unfairly treated. “It is important to the success of the business that we work hard to ensure drivers are treated well and will investigate any concerns where someone believes this is not the case,” he says.

Amazon says its technology takes into account traffic conditions and expected rest breaks when assigning routes to ensure that drivers can complete their deliveries safely within a shift. It defends its health and safety record, claiming that the number of ambulance call outs is misleading without factoring in the number of hours worked, size of the workforce and whether the incidents were work-related.

It also claims it regularly audits its subcontracted delivery firms. In a statement it says: “We are disappointed to hear of the experience of two drivers who worked with an independent delivery company in 2016 and 2017. We are committed to ensuring that the people contracted by our independent delivery providers and individuals who deliver packages through the Amazon Flex programme are fairly compensated and are treated with respect, and this is reflected by the positive feedback we receive from drivers every day.

“Ensuring drivers have a safe, positive experience is important to us, and they have a number of ways to share comments or concerns, including escalating any challenges to Amazon through a 24/7 hotline, which works quickly to investigate any concerns and supports drivers.”

Wright, Dawson and Biri claim that they were unaware of a complaints procedure and that no support was offered. Eighteen months after his breakdown, Dawson says he’s still unable to work. “For me it was like being an android worker in a dystopian world,” he says.

* Names have been changed

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos and former wife MacKenzie.



Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos and former wife MacKenzie. Photograph: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

Life is different at the top of the pile

While many delivery drivers can look forward to a 12-hour shift on the road, life is very different for the founder of Amazon – even after a multibillion-dollar divorce.

The rise of the online giant as the internet’s most successful retailer has made Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world. He is the largest shareholder in the company that began in 1994 as an online bookseller but eventually grew into a globally dominant all-purpose retailer.

Earlier this month, it emerged that MacKenzie Bezos, now the ex-wife of Jeff (both are pictured), gave away 75% of her stake in the company and all voting rights to the billionaire entrepreneur as part of their divorce settlement. While she will not be the richest woman in the world as a result of the separation, she will have a fortune of $36bn (£27.5bn). That leaves Jeff Bezos with a fortune of well over $100bn.

The settlement means that Amazon will be spared the kind of boardroom battle that has plagued other companies whose owners are dealing with family rifts.

Shane Hickey



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