(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc. has apologized to US Representative Mark Pocan for conceding an “own goal” in its initial denial that its drivers are sometimes forced to urinate in bottles during their delivery rounds. .
“We know that drivers can find problems due to traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this was especially the case during Covid when many public toilets were closed,” the company said in a blog post bit.ly/2PnoLKr. .
Its approval comes a week after Democrat criticized Amazon’s working conditions and tweeted: ‘Paying workers $ 15 an hour does not make you a’ progressive workplace ‘if you trade union and workers in do not let water bottles urinate. ‘
Amazon initially issued a denial, saying in a tweet: ‘You do not really believe the thing of fluffing in bottles, do you? If that were true, no one would work for us. “But it consequently caused the comments to return.
“It was an end in itself, we are unhappy about it and we apologize to Representative Pocan,” Amazon said in its blog post, adding that the previous response only referred to staff in its warehouses or establishment centers.
The company said the issue goes all over the industry and seeks solutions without specifying what it might be.
Amazon’s apology comes at a time when workers in a warehouse in Alabama are waiting for a number of votes that could lead to the online retailer’s first union in America and could be a watershed moment for organized labor.
Amazon has long discouraged efforts among its more than 800,000 U.S. employees to organize. Allegations by many workers about an exhausting or unsafe workplace have turned the union of the enterprise into an important target for the American labor movement.
Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Edited by David Holmes