Amazon issues 13,000 disciplinary complaints at single US warehouse

 Amazon employee Gerald Bryson has been taking a manual count for three days. Bryson made 22 mistakes, including counting 19 products in a bin that actually had 20. If Bryson makes six such mistakes in a year, he would be fired by Amazon, the release said.

Internal Amazon documents show how the company regularly measures employee performance in detail and warns those who are even slightly underperforming. In the year ended April 2020, the company instituted more than 13,000 so-called \'disciplines\' in Bryson's camp alone, a lawyer for Amazon said in court filings.

Amazon disclosed the records in response to a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint about Bryson's April 2020 firing. Many of those filings are also included in another ongoing lawsuit in federal court in which the NLRB seeks to block what it calls Amazon's \'blatantly unfair labor practices\'

An administrative justice judge ordered Bryson's reinstatement in April after finding he had unlawfully fired him for protesting workplace safety conditions. Amazon is appealing the judge's decision and said in a statement that the company fired Bryson for defaming a colleague during a demonstration in a warehouse parking lot.

Bryson, now a union organizer, added that he wasn't sure if he would return. Amazon told a judge in the Bryson case that it could not meet the NLRB's subpoena request to issue thousands of disciplinary sanctions to employees this year. However, it provided statistics on so-called \'discipline\' at three camps and turned over dozens of personnel files.

In a documented breach, Amazon charged employees with. A six-minute off work in June 2018 resulted in a warehouse worker in Carteret, N.J. receiving a reprimand at 2:57 a.m. on the same shift. A worker at the same warehouse in New Jersey has been beating expectations for weeks. But Amazon management warned him in October 2017 that he could be fired if he didn't increase the speed at which he scans and authenticates items.

* Rest time is more than four minutes. The New Jersey worker, who was hit by productivity hits, also received a letter in March 2017 telling him not to exceed the deadline. Four times during a week in spring 2019, an item ordered by a shopper failed to fetch. A New York warehouse worker picked more than 15,800 items correctly for a customer.

According to Amazon's statement to Reuters, less than 25 percent of the feedback was related to so-called \'opportunities for improvement,\' most of which were related to attendance. A warehouse in North Haven, Connecticut employed an average of 4,800 people as of December 2020, with more than 5,000 such notices issued in the year to April 2020.

Bryson's job was to use a pistol-shaped scanner to count the screws, bolts and other inventory from container to container. On December 6 of that year, he was charged with counting 295 shipments per hour, compared with the company's estimate of 478. After being first warned wrong in writing, Bryson said he slowed down to count correctly.

In January 2019, Bryson flipped through nearly 8,000 items in four days. He received two more articles this month, although his rate accelerated to 371 per hour. Bryson said he just kept \'counting, moving, counting, moving\' and was hit again by misattribution.

Workers have flocked to the big-box retailer in recent years, and their wages have generally been higher than those of its biggest rivals. Amazon said last September it raised the average starting salary for workers in its U.S. operations to more than $18 an hour.

Roshawn Heslop, a marine clerk in North Haven, said pressure prompted him to lash out at him in November 2019. He is on probation and could be fired if he doesn't meet the requirements. At least two employees said in court filings that the job took an emotional toll.