Amazon has issued an apology for a pair of tweets from its corporate news account attacking Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Calif.) for criticizing the company’s workplace environment amid a big unionization push at a fulfillment center in Alabama.
“This was an own-goal, we’re unhappy about it, and we owe an apology to Representative Pocan,” Amazon said in a statement Friday.
Pocan responded Saturday morning.
“Sigh. This is not about me, this is about your workers ― who you don’t treat with enough respect or dignity,” he wrote.
Amazon has been fighting a union drive at a Bessemer, Alabama, facility that threatens to give unionization efforts a boost elsewhere across the country. The company raised eyebrows last week for a series of uncharacteristically snotty responses to politicians who were tweeting about its workers and business practices.
It was a strategy that reportedly came from the very top ― Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wanted his corporate communications team to respond more aggressively against charges of unfair labor practices, according to Recode.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), among others, has voiced strong support for Amazon workers’ push for better conditions. Last Wednesday, Amazon executive Dave Clark snarkily welcomed the senator to the Alabama facility in a tweet sarcastically thanking him for his work on behalf of American workers.
“I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace,” Clark said.
It was Pocan who jumped in to respond to Clark. “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles,” he tweeted.
Amazon News, a corporate Amazon Twitter account, responded to Pocan in a tone similar to Clark’s.
“You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us,” the tweet read.
It is, in fact, well-documented that Amazon workers are subject to strict and physically demanding protocols. Some workers say they sometimes take extreme measures to avoid stopping their work, because too much “time off task,” as Amazon calls breaks, can result in discipline.
It is less common for Amazon’s warehouse workers to take bathroom shortcuts, however, than it is for delivery drivers, who have difficulty finding public restrooms ― especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
In its Friday statement, Amazon acknowledged that the tweet was wrong.
“It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers,” the company explained, saying it is aware that delivery drivers struggle to find restrooms and pledging to help find a solution to the “industry-wide” problem.
Amazon then differentiated its drivers from its fulfillment center workers.
“A typical Amazon fulfillment center has dozens of restrooms, and employees are able to step away from their work station at any time. If any employee in a fulfillment center has a different experience, we encourage them to speak to their manager and we’ll work to fix it.”
Amazon’s apology to Pocan was published late on Friday, which could be interpreted as an effort to put it out quietly. The company also remained mum on Amazon News’ other tweets targeting Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has also proven herself one of Amazon’s loudest critics in Congress.
Amazon workers have already voted on the unionization question, but their ballots are still being counted, according to AL.com. Nearly 6,000 ballots were sent out. Results are expected in the next week.
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