Amazon does employ delivery drivers though - I’m not sure how many, so it might be insignificant in the larger scheme of things, but they do employ them. And I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that type of performance was expected of them too.
Ya, Amazon’s own private drivers are a new thing, and still somewhat isolated I believe. I don’t know what their deal is currently.
Under UK law, they could well be treated as Amazon workers regardless. That’s what happened with Uber. Slightly different set of facts, but generally speaking being directly employed by an agency ostensibly on an contractor basis doesn’t get the ultimate employer off the hook, necessarily. Essentially if the substance of the relationship is that Amazon sets the terms of employment, they’re workers.
California law changes in 2018 to make General Building Contractors responsible for any unpaid (or under paid) wages of any subcontractors they employ. A law like that, which as a GC I think is insane, would make what things like what those drivers go thru a thing of the past here if it was applied equally to all businesses.
I’ve had several Amazon packages delivered to me by private drivers in their own cars, and I live outside of Seattle.
Here in LA, Amazon uses private drivers for the Prime Now deliveries at the very least.
Yeah, Prime Now is all private drivers pretty much everywhere. I understand Amazon employees can also earn extra money heading home by dropping off packages, as well.
Only one of my orders was Prime Now. The rest were regular Prime.
That driver obviously confused “2-day delivery” with “#2 delivery”
Around here, Amazon seems to be using sub-contractors for delivery. One of them nearly got stuck in my (very steep) driveway in his euro-style cargo van. Took him two minutes of very intense wheel-spinning to make it to the top (thanks for the black marks in my driveway, bub!)
Amazon using private drivers is not new. It’s been happening for some time now.
It’s been literally gong on for years in the USA. And not just in big cities. They’ve used private drivers here in the past.
I’ve seen people on Twitter talking about this happening as well, so it’s not just a UK thing.
He probably wasn’t allowed to stop to take a shit someplace.
So what do you do…tell your employees if nature calls you just hold it in until your lunch break or you return to the office? Do they somehow monitor their vehicles to know if they stop at a McDonalds to take a dump?
Probably a GPS of some sort. If they stay in one spot too long they’re “taking a break”. Add some cameras that record the inside of the vehicle for flavor.
I mean, I’m just spitballing, but it wouldn’t be hard to do these days. UPS already does something similar and has for a while now. Add in the security for stolen packages and I’m almost sure they do something along those lines so these people aren’t pocketing stuff or the like.
I mean, exactly, I hope they can. McDonald’s has rendered a great service to humanity: it has created the world’s biggest network of public bathrooms. Who else would be better to benefit from it than drivers?
Yeah, this is exactly what they do. Even at my job, where we have some route truck drivers, it’s as simple as equipping them all with an iPad. It takes their orders, and tracks their every movement. The companies app even uses the geolocation features to ‘confirm’ whether a refused delivery made it to the stop, among other purposes.
They may use GPS to track the drivers, but I suspect the dump in the driveway was due to time pressure. These freelancers are probably doing same-day delivery for Amazon and if they don’t get it delivered that day, they may get bounced.
Maybe you sign up and Amazon loads you up with 30 deliveries you have to make in six hours or something like that. That’s why you pee in a bottle and crap in the driveway, to keep to schedule so you can make your below minimum wages and come back tomorrow for more.
Somehow these companies have convince the young that working for less than minimum wage for endless hours every day is somehow special and worthwhile because at least they don’t report to actual boss… they just get abused as self-employed individuals with no autonomy which used to mean you’re an employee if you don’t get to make certain decisions.
I guess I am supposed to call them… doers now.
At least Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook won’t have to worry too much about the tax bill, one way or another.
Sorry, this is a tangent, but since we are talking about Amazon, I thought I would post this video by Scott Galloway. I hope he is just trying to push his book, but if he isn’t, it’s a pretty scary picture.