Work as hell

Amazon allows workers to log into a system that monitors each worker’s performance, and the data is used to set their obligatory work rates, such as the demanded number of products scanned per hour. As long as they do not do anything that can be registered in the system (like ‘scanning goods’) the system records ‘time off task.’ That means that even if they work—doing something that is not registered—this time is recorded as taking a break. Such periods are added up and calculated as illegitimate ‘extra breaks.’ If workers do not meet the rates (that is, they work ‘too slowly’) or have too many ‘extra breaks,’ they get negative ‘feedback,’ and after several ‘feedbacks’ they can get a warning and eventually be sacked.

Trying to reach the rates is stressful enough, but even worse are days when Amazon tries to set ‘records,’ like 1 million orders processed in one warehouse within 24 hours. Warehouses compete with each other, and Amazon uses those days to push workers to the limit, ordering obligatory overtime and cancelling breaks before midnight. If workers reach the demanded ‘record,’ managers get an extra bonus and workers get T-shirts.

The continuous stress, noise, physical exhaustion, and lack of time to rest between shifts affect workers’ health. The heavy workload, running, and lifting particularly place stress on joints, feet, and backs. No wonder the sickness rate among permanent workers is high. For workers, going on sick leave is a way to get a rest and ‘repair’ their health, but for Amazon it is a cost factor. To bring down the sickness rate, Amazon Poland hired a company in spring 2017 which checks whether workers are at home during sick leave. A worker who was dismissed because of a sick leave wrote: ‘At Amazon we hear about safety every day, about health, but the reality is different. Not everyone can keep up the race at Amazon. People are treated like machines. But even machines fail and stand still. We are not allowed to do that.’

Organising and struggle

In late 2014, a few months after the warehouse opened, a group of Amazon workers in Poznań setup the Inicjatywa Pracownicza (ip, or Workers’ Initiative), a union without paid staff, based on self-organising and self-empowerment of workers. At the time, rank-and-file workers and team leaders were involved, but since then the union section has been primarily made up of rank-and-file workers. Currently it has a membership of about 400.

The slowdown(s)

Before a strike in Germany in June 2015, the management the Poznań warehouse announced one hour of overtime during the upcoming strike day across the border. Workers in Poznań were already aware that Amazon tried to bypass and undermine strikes in Germany by shifting orders between warehouses (in this case to Poland). Growing local tensions in the Poznań warehouse and the prospect of being used as scabs led to vivid discussions among workers on how to resist. Eventually, during the night shift on June 24–25, 2015, a few dozen workers improvised a slowdown in one department, taking advantage of a bottleneck in the processing of orders and disturbing operations in other parts of the warehouse. They showed a collective will to resist, their solidarity with workers on strike in Germany, and a keen knowledge of the work process and how to disrupt it.

Afterwards, workers were summoned by managers for questioning. Some declared they deliberately slowed down their work and would do it again. Several people were suspended and sacked, and some signed a contract termination agreement and left. Currently, some cases are still pending in the labour courts. Soon afterwards, Amazon raised the hourly wage by 1 zloty (about 8 percent), but it denied that the raise had anything to do with workers’ organising and the slowdown. Another smaller spontaneous slowdown happened before Christmas 2016, when some workers in the afe department significantly slowed down the packing process for a few hours, citing safety regulations. Team leaders tried to replace the workers but were not trained enough to do so efficiently. Both slowdowns were not just responses to low wages and work intensification but also protests against management strategies which force workers to compete, demand complete subordination, and under- mine workers’ dignity. After the slowdown in afe, one of the workers shouted at the pre-shift stand-up meeting: ‘Stop treating us like dogs!’

The strike ballot

After the first slowdown in June 2015, ip started an official collective bargaining process demanding, besides other things, a wage increase to 16 zlotys (20 to 25 percent more) and a different calculation of breaks (as workers lost a lot of break time walking to the canteens).

When negotiations and mandatory mediation ended without agreement, ip could not call for a strike although more than 97 percent of those participating in the strike ballot voted for strike. Polish labour law, one of the most restrictive in Europe, requires a ballot with a turnout of at least 50 percent of the entire workforce and a majority vote. At Amazon Poland, only 30 percent of the workforce participated in the ballot. Still, more than 2,000 workers—directly employed and contemporary agency workers—voted for strike, a clear sign of the discontent among Amazon’s workforce.

The strike ballot was lost, but it made ip’s organising drive, the conflict about working conditions, and the resistance more visible to all Amazon workers in Poland. Amazon Poland raised the hourly wages again by 1 zloty (to 15 zlotys, plus an extra zloty for senior workers). Workers usually do not react with collectively organised protests, but with multiple (minor) acts of disobedience like starting breaks early, working slowly, rejecting tasks, using gaps in the system, challenging decisions of superiors, regularly visiting the toilet or otherwise leaving the workplace, and simulating accidents. Amazon is unable to completely subordinate the workers’ activities to the rhythm of the warehouse machine.