Melville House Books

An employee at the Amazon.com warehouse in England cited for Dickensian working conditions in a report on yesterday’s MobyLives has written in to say: it’s worse than you thought. “Alan” at the Amazon warehouse in Bedfordshire, England writes in to MobyLives to say: “I work at the mk warehouse and let me tell you everything in the article is true! We don’t get paid that well — in fact we have not had a payrise for 18 months because the co takes no notice of company performance in assessing the pay rates, just what they call ‘the local market’. Even then they aim to be in the top half of payers for similar roles. BUT they also include in their analysis PRP which is neither guaranteed nor predictable, and share options which are only available to people with 2 years service. In any case, the vast majority of workers at this time are agency on short-term contracts who barely receive the national minimum wage. I suggest you look at the original article on the Times website, and be assured ‘Believe what you read not what amazon spokespeople in the US say.’ Also everytime we mention a union, we get veiled threats of closure as happened in the US.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.