Amazon Admits Its Workers Pee in Bottles While on the Job

When you gotta go you gotta go.

05 Apr 2021

Amazon apologized to Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis. on Friday after denying his claim that drivers for Amazon urinate in bottles while on their routes. Pocan originally tweeted, “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles”. Pocan tweeted this on March 24th, which started the controversy. Amazon replied to the tweet as ignorantly as possible.

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

Do they really believe all their employees are proud to be a cog in the machine that is Amazon? The fact that Amazon employees are trying to unionize shows they are unhappy with their current situation.

Amazon decided to write an apology in a blog post. Here is the first part of their "apology":

“First, the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers. 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.”

First of all, this sounds like a forced apology for PR reasons. Secondly, they admitted that drivers need to pee in places other than a toilet while on the job. They went on to say that they would like to solve this industry-wide issue but don’t know how yet. If I had to guess, they wouldn’t be interested in solving this issue unless it was brought to light. I guess we’ll wait and see if they actually try to solve this problem. I have a feeling we’ll be waiting a long time.