Several Amazon drivers claim they have been asked to turn off a driving-monitoring app to complete their delivery routes faster.
Drivers in New York, Texas, Michigan, Tennessee, and Georgia claimed they were instructed by their supervisors to turn off an app called Mentor, which Amazon uses to monitor the speed of its drivers and give them a safety score, according to a Thursday report from Motherboard.
“Sign out of Mentor if you haven’t already,” a dispatcher in Detroit told one driver in March, in a message reviewed by the outlet.
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“Starting tomorrow everyone needs to be logged into Mentor for at least 2 hours no more no less, so make sure that’s one of the first things we’re doing in the mornings,” a dispatcher in the Atlanta area told drivers in a group chat, according to another text.
According to five drivers, they were allegedly asked to keep Mentor on for a few hours, then turn it off. Amazon reportedly gives bonuses to the delivery companies it contracts with, but those bonuses are tied to high average safety ratings. The drivers claimed they were asked to keep the app on for a time, minding their breaking and speed, and then to turn it off to make their deliveries more efficient without being detected.
“Speeding was the main thing. They were harsh on drivers that weren’t going as fast as they wanted,” a former Michigan driver told the outlet. “I complied when they asked me to turn off the app because I didn’t want to cause friction. But it was a lot of stress, high blood pressure, seething anger and frustration.”
One owner of an Amazon delivery company near Seattle called the issue “not ethical.”
“The issue here is Amazon does not compensate delivery companies fairly for what they’re asking us to do. Everything is done on a shoestring budget,” the owner said. “Companies that tell their drivers to turn off the app are trying to get a perfect score so they can get their incentives. In my opinion, this is not ethical.”
Amazon has since rebuked the decisions to turn off the apps.
“This behavior is unacceptable and does not adhere to the safety standards that we expect of all Delivery Service Partners,” Rena Lunak, a spokeswoman for Amazon said. “It’s also misleading to suggest that this behavior is necessary – in fact, more than 90% of all drivers are able to complete their deliveries before the scheduled time while following all safety procedures.”
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The controversy is just the latest in a series of reports that have made Amazon notorious for its working conditions. Last month, the company defeated a unionization effort at an Amazon facility in Alabama. Soon after, the union lodged election objections with the federal labor board and alleged improprieties with a ballot collection box installation, threats of layoffs and pay cuts by Amazon to the employees, and intimidation.
Amazon did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
