‘This Was an Own-Goal’: Amazon Apologizes for Combative Tweet Denying ‘The Peeing in Bottles Thing’
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Amazon issued a surprise apology over the weekend for a rather combative tweet it sent to a member of Congress that they’re admitting wasn’t actually accurate.
To recap: in the past few weeks some lawmakers have been publicly calling out Amazon over poor working conditions for its employees, including Congressman Mark Pocan (D- WI). In response to one Amazon executive publicly hitting back at Senator Bernie Sanders, Pocan tweeted, “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a “progressive workplace” when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles.”
The actual Amazon News account then actually responded by saying, “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.”
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
2/2 We hope you can enact policies that get other employers to offer what we already do.
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021
As of this posting, the tweets are still up, but on Friday, Amazon posted a statement apologizing and saying, “This was an own-goal, we’re unhappy about it, and we owe an apology to Representative Pocan.”
In addition to the tweet not receiving “proper scrutiny,” Amazon admitted it was just untrue:
[T]he 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…
[W]e 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.
“We will continue to speak out when misrepresented, but we will also work hard to always be accurate,” Amazon adds.
Pocan responded to the apology by saying, “This is not about me, this is about your workers—who you don’t treat with enough respect or dignity.”
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
