Amazon have retracted a tweet sent to a US politician
Amazon have apologised to a politician in the United States for wrongly denying that some of their drivers are forced to urinate in bottles.
Mark Pocan suggested the company made “workers urinate in water bottles” in a tweet sent late last month.
This prompted a reply from the Amazon News account, which insisted “if that were true, nobody would work for us.”
1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021
However, Amazon have since released a statement apologising to Pocan and acknowledging that their response was not accurate.
“We owe an apology to Representative Pocan,” the statement said. “The tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfilment centres.”
While the statement added that its fulfilment centres offer dozens of toilets for employees to use, it said that its drivers sometimes encountered problems finding toilets when on the road.
“We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed.”
The statement went on to acknowledge this was a “long-standing, industry-wide issue” which they wanted to fix.
Pocan had originally criticised the company for opposing worker efforts to unionise one of its facilities in Alabama. Despite Amazon’s retraction, he rejected their attempts to apologise.
“This is not about me, this is about your workers – who you don’t treat with enough respect or dignity,” he tweeted on Saturday. “Start by acknowledging the inadequate working conditions you’ve created for ALL your workers, then fix that for everyone and finally, let them unionise without interference.”
Sigh.
This is not about me, this is about your workers—who you don't treat with enough respect or dignity.
Start by acknowledging the inadequate working conditions you've created for ALL your workers, then fix that for everyone & finally, let them unionize without interference. https://t.co/tdIns0AR66
— Rep. Mark Pocan (@RepMarkPocan) April 3, 2021
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