Roughly half of frontline warehouse staff at Amazon are having hassle making ends meet, a brand new report reveals. The examine comes 5 years after the net retailer raised minimal hourly wages to $15.
Fifty-three % of staff mentioned they skilled meals insecurity within the earlier three months, whereas 48% mentioned they’d hassle masking hire or housing prices over the identical time interval, in keeping with a report from the Middle for City Financial Improvement on the College of Illinois Chicago. One other 56% of warehouse staff who kind, pack and ship items to clients mentioned they weren’t capable of pay their payments in full.
“This analysis signifies simply how far the goalposts have shifted. It was once the case that huge, main companies within the financial system supplied a path to the center class and relative financial safety,” Dr. Sanjay Pinto, senior fellow at CUED and co-author of the report, mentioned in an announcement Wednesday. “Our knowledge point out that roughly half of Amazon’s front-line warehouse staff are battling meals and housing insecurity and having the ability to pay their payments. That is not what financial safety appears like.”
Regardless of working for one of many largest and most worthwhile corporations within the U.S., Amazon warehouse staff seem like so strained financially that one-third has relied on no less than one publicly funded help program, just like the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program, or SNAP. The report’s knowledge reveals what seems to be a gulf between what these staff earn and any measure of financial stability.
The researchers included survey responses from 1,484 staff in 42 states. The Ford Basis, Oxfam America and the Nationwide Employment Regulation Venture backed the work.
Linda Howard, an Amazon warehouse employee in Atlanta, mentioned the pay for workers like herself pales compared to the bodily calls for of the job.
“The hourly pay at Amazon isn’t sufficient for the backbreaking work … For the exhausting work we do and the cash Amazon makes, each affiliate ought to make a livable wage,” she mentioned in an announcement.
The report additionally highlights the monetary destruction that may happen when warehouse staff take unpaid break day after being damage or drained from the job.
Sixty-nine % of Amazon warehouse staff say they’ve needed to take break day to deal with ache or exhaustion associated to work, and 60% of those that take unpaid break day for such causes report experiencing meals insecurity, in keeping with the analysis.
“The findings we report are the primary we all know of to point out an affiliation between the corporate’s well being and questions of safety and experiences of financial insecurity amongst its workforce,” mentioned Dr. Beth Gutelius, analysis director at CUED and co-author of the report. “Employees having to take unpaid break day attributable to ache or exhaustion are much more more likely to expertise meals and housing insecurity, and issue paying their payments.”
Amazon disputed the survey’s findings.
“The methodology cited on this paper is deeply flawed – it is a survey that ignores greatest practices for surveying, has restricted verification safeguards to substantiate respondents are Amazon staff, and would not stop a number of responses from the identical particular person,” a spokesperson for Amazon mentioned in an announcement to CBS MoneyWatch.
The corporate added that its common hourly pay within the U.S. is now $20.50.
In April, the corporate criticized earlier analysis from the teams that targeted on office security and surveillance at Amazon warehouses.
“Whereas we respect Oxfam and its mission, we’ve robust disagreements with the characterizations and conclusions made all through this paper — many based mostly on flawed methodology and hyperbolic anecdotes,” Amazon mentioned in a part of the sooner analysis. Amazon additionally forged doubt on the veracity of the responses used within the Oxfam report; the corporate mentioned it believed researchers couldn’t confirm that respondents truly labored for Amazon.
