A few days before Christmas, one in two French people turn to Amazon for your gifts.
L’Oeil du 20H was recruited by the American giant and takes you behind the scenes of a distribution site.
As the holidays approach, the n ° 1 in online commerce is posting hundreds of ads to recruit temporary workers. This is the case with the Lauwin-Planque site, near Douai (North). 300 positions to be filled. No qualifications or experience required for this job.
Here I am hired as an “order picker” for a one-month assignment. Salary: 10.88 euros gross per hour, 3.5% more than the minimum wage.
Thursday, December 9, is D-Day. Equipped with a hidden camera, direction the warehouse. At 2 p.m., we are hundreds of temporary workers to take over from those in the morning segment. Mandatory security check before starting work. And this instruction: “you don’t come in with anything on your body”. To prevent theft, Amazon allows its employees to keep only a bottle of water and a transparent bag with them. Security can thus check the content at any time.
It is then with this message in English and in capital letters that Amazon welcomes us: “Work hard, have fun and make history”, mantra from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The tone is set for our 7am shift.
“It’s the 15 days there, when you must not be absent or be late, not even a minute. Even illness doesn’t work, warns our trainer.
For my mission, I am assigned to “Pick”, understand in French: picking up items in the 90,000 square meters of warehouse, or the equivalent of fourteen football fields. My essential tool: the scanner. To cope with the peak activity of the holiday season and its millions of parcel shipments per week, every minute counts. This scanner would also allow managers to control us according to this colleague, even if Amazon denies monitoring its employees: “if you ever stop in a department, your beeper will detect that you have stopped. If you stop like that , they will come and see you “.
That day, at the end of the shift, a message on my scanner invites me to go upstairs to see the managers to take stock of my first 48 hours: “hi, can you come to P4D please. Thank you. ”One of them then explained to me:“ Amazon’s production is to be at 100%. You started yesterday. There, you are at 40% of performance, today we are trying to see for 50%. It bothers me when it does not go up gradually ”.
The performance. In Amazon parlance, it is the number of products collected and the time spent between each scan. “And the manager, facing me, gave a speech with the accents of a sports coach:” the objective is not to hurt yourself “adding that it is not allowed to take a break except for the one authorized.
Between 2:10 p.m. and 9:20 p.m., I will travel 15 km that day. One break of 35 minutes, 25 of which are paid. A pace that some find here trying, like this temporary worker I met on my journey: “we are not very young, we are over 20 years old”.
According to Amazon, eight in ten employees say they are satisfied with their working conditions. However, a report from January 2021, commissioned by elected officials of Amazon staff, denounces a rate of work and an absenteeism rate for work accidents and illness which has been increasing for 2 years. A particularly high rate at Amazon Lauwin-Planque exceeding, according to the report, the alert threshold of 8%. “A rate below that of companies in the sector,” Amazon nuance. Finally, the report calls on the group’s management to “protect the physical and mental health of every worker”.
Chritophe Bocquet, FO union representative at Amazon Lauwin-Planque, who joined Amazon 8 years ago, today denounces what he calls “the hidden face” of the group: “excessive business, the dehumanization of people. We are seen as robots. ”
When contacted, Amazon says it is constantly seeking to improve to offer the best possible working environment to its employees. As for us, we will tear up the check for these 2 ½ days of work.
Among our sources:
Amazon’s response to our questions (on five pages):
Page 1 – page 2 – page 3 – page 4 – page 5
Amazon France Logistique report (January 2021): Review of social policy, working conditions and employment 2019