Staff at Amazon told to work overtime as demand increased due to virus
Although the government has restricted social gathering for all over UK, workers at Amazon are being told to work overtime to meet the increase in demand because of the ongoing corona virus.
It has been notified by the GMB union that the workers from at least four store sites have been told to put in a ‘required overtime’ starting from Monday.
“Amazon has put profit before safety”, says National officer Mick Rix.
In their defense, Amazon said that they are working to make sure the customers are delivered what they need.
The compulsory overtime is the bound for some employees as written in their contract, to work extra hours as per employer’s request.
‘A sudden increase in demand’
Amazon has 17 warehouses in UK and employs 27,000 people.
A worker at that Underline warehouse, who chose to be anonymous, told that the ‘inbound goods’ staff members are having imposed extra hours.
The workers with the compulsory overtime in their contract say this imposed overtime will last for two weeks.
The workers also say that the new incoming of goods by the company due to the virus, is adding workload to the employees.
The sought-after goods are handwash, boxes of rice, bleach and powered milk.
The workers also notified that earlier this imposition of overtime was only for the Christmas period or “Prime week”, where discounts were offered to subscribers.
The worker told that although other departments are not imposing this compulsory overtime, they are offering up to 60 hours of voluntary overtime.
A spokesperson from Amazon confirmed that they had increased the shifts timing across the stores in UK.