Amazon apologizes to congressman who said employees were forced to urinate in water bottles

“We apologize to Representative Pocan,” Amazon wrote after initially pushing back on Pocan’s claim.

AMAZON SHOOTS BACK AT CONGRESSMAN WHO SAID IT MAKES WORKERS URINATE INTO WATER BOTTLES

“You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” the Seattle-based corporation wrote March 24. “If that were true, nobody would work for us.”

Amazon acknowledged some truth to Pocan’s claims in its Friday blog post.

“We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed,” Amazon said, adding that it was “look[ing] for solutions” to the situation.

Pocan seemed unimpressed by Amazon’s apology, saying the company’s drivers were not the only employees suffering from subpar working conditions.

“This is not about me, this is about your workers — who you don’t treat with enough respect or dignity,” he wrote. “Start by acknowledging the inadequate working conditions you’ve created for ALL your workers, then fix that for everyone & finally, let them unionize without interference.”

While the claims of urinating in water bottles are more prevalent among drivers, some employees in other areas of operation, such as warehouse workers, have lobbed similar charges at Amazon. The issue first arose in 2018 when undercover journalist James Bloodworth reported that employees at an Amazon warehouse facility in England were forced to use bottles to save time.

“People just peed in bottles because they lived in fear of being disciplined over ‘idle time’ and losing their jobs just because they needed the loo,” he told the Sun.

Amazon denied Bloodworth’s claims and continues to deny claims of subpar warehouse work environments in light of the more recent allegations.

The claims have caught the attention of many members of Congress, who have held hearings on the matter. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has called out Amazon’s reluctance to allow workers to unionize as a result of the reports of inadequate working conditions.

“Today, we’re going to be talking about what it means morally and economically when one person in this country, the wealthiest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, has become $77 billion richer during this horrific pandemic while denying hundreds of thousands of workers who work at Amazon paid sick leave and hazard pay,” Sanders said of Amazon’s CEO during a hearing on wealth inequality before the Senate Budget Committee earlier in March.

While employees who partook in the hearing acknowledged Amazon’s policy of paying workers $15 per hour, a sticking point for many Democrats who want a $15 minimum wage, they argued that the higher base pay was not enough to compensate for the poor working conditions.

“Amazon brags it pays workers above the minimum wage; what they don’t tell you is what those jobs are really like,” Jennifer Bates, an employee at an Amazon facility in Alabama, told lawmakers during the hearing. “And they certainly don’t tell you that they can afford to do much better for the workers. Working at Amazon [warehouses] is no easy thing. The shifts are long, the pace is super-fast, [and] you’re constantly being watched and monitored. They seem to think you are another machine.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Amazon has maintained that its workplace was among the most progressive.

“I welcome [Sanders] to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace,” Dave Clark, the CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business, said, later pointing out that in Sanders’s state of Vermont, the minimum wage is $11.75.