A former Amazon worker has sued the e-commerce big within the US for not scheduling the necessary 30-minute meal breaks for workers.
Lovenia Scott, a former worker of Amazon`s fulfilment centre in Vacaville, California, alleged that the corporate didn`t present sufficient relaxation breaks for employees, The Verge reported on Saturday.
“When they did get their meal breaks, workers were expected to monitor their walkie-talkies in case of any problems on the floor, which sometimes cut into their break time,” the lawsuit claimed.
First filed in San Francisco County Superior Court in February, the case has now been moved to US District Court California, Northern District.
The lawsuit additionally alleged that shifts have been “chronically understaffed,” which left some workers unable to take brief 10-minute relaxation breaks so as to end their work on time.
Amazon was but to touch upon the report.
Earlier this month, Amazon and an impartial contractor it labored inside California have been fined $6.4 million for wage theft by the Labor Commission`s Office.
The probe discovered that “Green Messengers, the subcontractor for Amazon, underpaid drivers, scheduling them 10-hour days but with a workload that forced drivers to skip meal and rest breaks”.
Last week, amid mounting proof of allegedly ill-treating its low-paid employees, Amazon denied exploitative working circumstances at its amenities, together with forcing exhausted employees to `pee in bottles.
Replying to a tweet from US Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI), the e-commerce behemoth stated that the corporate`s union-busting techniques allegations are baseless.
“Paying workers $15/hr doesn`t make you a `progressive workplace` when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles,” Pocan stated in a tweet.
Amazon replied: “You don`t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one”.
“We hope you can enact policies that get other employers to offer what we already do,” the corporate additional said.
Once the Twitter warfare began, a number of journalists and individuals who have documented such incidents at Amazon amenities started flooding the Web.
Journalist James Bloodworth, whose 2018 e-book titled `Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain,` documented his expertise of low-paid work for corporations together with Amazon.
