news review · the most frantic weekend of the shopping season — from black friday to cyber...

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The retail giant recruits an army of temporary staff in the run-up to Christmas at its biggest UK distributioncentre. Undercover reporterMary O’Connor joined them to see how the slick operationworks; what she

foundwas a soulless world of back-breaking toil, petty rules, low pay and Orwellian surveillanceMy journey to the heart ofBritain’s booming online economy beganwith awake-up alarm at 4am and anervous 20-minute trek along emptystreets to a Glasgow bus stop. There Istood in the biting cold with ahalf-awake group of ashen-facedworkers awaiting the 75-minute transferto a 21st-century El Dorado— the vastwarehouse in Dunfermline, Fife, thatserves as Amazon UK’s biggestdistribution centre.We boarded the bus at 5.15am and

settled into our seats, desperate to snatcha little more sleep before themorningshifts began. I couldmanage nomorethan intermittent dozing.Well wrapped up for the early start, I

was now too hot in the swelteringvehicle. Aroundme restless workers idlygazed at their mobile phones as weheaded east towards amurkyDunfermline dawn.Christmas was coming and before it

themost frantic weekend of the shoppingseason— from Black Friday to CyberMonday. On Black Friday last yearAmazon had sold 7.4m items at a rate of86 a second. To prepare for themaddestof consumer rushes from late November

onwards, the companywas boosting its1,500 Dunfermline workforce with 4,000temporary employees. Thewesternworld’s virtual Santa neededwarehouseelves by the busload. I was one of them.It didn’t takeme long to realise that

my job as a “picker”— a retriever ofitems fromwarehouse shelves— camewith a number of snags. The first was thebus— provided by the recruitmentagency that got me the job—whichworkers were charged £10 a day to travelon. Unless you lived in Dunfermline orowned a car, there was really noalternative to the 5.15am flyer. The onlyother way of reaching thewarehousefromGlasgow involved a three-hourjourney on four different buses.Yet when you are being paid £7.35 an

hour by the recruitment agency— only40p above the national minimumwagefor a 24-year-old such asmyself —immediately having to pay out £10 a dayis more than a pain in thewallet.I calculated that by the time I had

stumped up the bus fare four or fivetimes eachweek and had taken anunpaid 30-minute lunch break, asstipulated by the agency inmy terms ofemployment, I was effectively earning£6.35 an hour formy 10-hour shift —60p below the relevantminimumwage.I had opted to work day shifts that ran

from 7am to 5.30pm. Duringmandatoryovertime periods of peak online shoppingwe had towork an extra hour on eachshift, plus an additional day on certainweeks.The benefits included free coffee and

tea and “hot canteen food”.What the jobadverts had failed tomentionwas thatthe handheld scanners that workers aregiven to locate and retrieve packages alsoserve tomonitor their whereabouts in thewarehouse and their level of activity.Those famous Amazon databases not

only sort and sell products; they alsoanalyse the performance, errors and“idle time” of “pickers” and “stowers”—those who keep thewarehouse shelves

stocked— and penalise them if they slipbelow the company’s performancetargets.By the end of the first week I was

already under pressure. I was told that Ihadmade four errors in 40 hours ofhunting and fetching and had becomesubject to a disciplinary process.Themistakes in question had involved

marking items that I couldn’t find in thehaystack-like warehouse as “missing”.When it received a “missing” report,

Amazonwould send a team to check. Aworker who turned out to havemade amistakewas obviously incompetent orlazy. I certainly wasn’t lazy but it wasoften frustrating trying to pick out, say, asmall packet of seeds from the bottom ofan overflowing storage bin.My excuses were to no avail: I was

told that because the number of errors Ihadmadewere so high, I wouldautomatically be onmy final warning thefollowingweek— one step away frombeing sacked.

I also learnt that Amazon operated astringent attendance policy with apenalty points system punishinglateness, overlong breaks and absence forsickness. One supervisor warned us thatif we received six penalty points in sixweeks wewould be “released”.One day I offered to present a doctor’s

note to explainmy absencewith amigraine, but was told that I wouldreceive a penalty point anyway. Aco-worker spent three days in hospitalwith a severe kidney infection andwasgiven two penalty points, reduced to oneon appeal.I would later fall foul of the scrutiny of

idle timewhen a recruitment agencysupervisormonitoring the performanceof temporary staff tracked downmywhereabouts viamy scanner.The supervisor was now accusingme

of spending half an hour of thecompany’s time talking to two youngmen.Well, it’s true that I’m a24-year-old womanwho sometimes

talks tomen. My stationary 10-minutechat with two co-workers had beendetected by our scanners andmerited awarning. Guilty as charged.The glossy promise of a shiny hi-tech

working environment didn’t match up tothe numbing reality of my job on thewarehouse floor. Every day I wouldtrundle down the aisles withmy trolleyand yellow plastic bins known as “totes”.The place had the charm of a

cemetery, with birdsong replaced by thejarring beeps of the perpetually busyscanner. I still hear them inmy sleep.At first, when it wasn’t quite so

chaotic, I could walk formiles withoutseeing another human being, pluckingitems from shelves ranging fromdiamanté thongs to a chopping boardengravedwith Lionel Richie’s face. Somelucky soul is in for a real treat thisChristmas.As the days slid on indistinguishably I

began to hear other workers complainingabout increasingly “impossible”performance targets. By the thirdweekwewere expected to retrieve aminimumof 75 items an hour.Wewere permitted only one error a

week—wronglymarking an item asmissingwhen it was not — and runningin the aisles was forbidden. I covered upto 14miles a day—more than half thedistance of amarathon—mostly byspeed-walking.I learnt of one employeewho suffered

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NewsReview£80 a day, 11-hour shifts, exit searches

and penalties for errors . . .

. . . the real cost of your giftsfrom this year

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