Amazon refused to give pregnant workers bathroom breaks
arstechnica.comI skimmed the lawsuit. As far as I can tell, the complaint is about getting 4 x 15 minute extra breaks during the day and lighter work. Amazon did grant them, but the complaint is that they didn't do it fast enough. There's also something of a disagreement where she expected to be paid for the extra hour of break time every day, but Amazon was counting it as unpaid. She was reassigned to lighter work at her request, but the complaint is that she still had to lift heavy things and they didn't give her a job where she could sit down.
The word "bathroom" shows up a lot but that doesn't appear core to the lawsuit. I think an editor was engineering the headline for maximum clickbait to link back to the previous Amazon bathroom break stories.
Regardless of what you think about Amazon, this reporting could use a little less clickbait and little more details from the actual lawsuit.
> I skimmed the lawsuit. As far as I can tell, the complaint is about getting 4 x 15 minute extra breaks during the day and lighter work. Amazon did grant them, but the complaint is that they didn't do it fast enough. There's also something of a disagreement where she expected to be paid for the extra hour of break time every day, but Amazon was counting it as unpaid
That was exactly the point, or the worker would have requested vacation.
Stop kissing corporate's ass.
headline is factual: Lawsuit: Amazon refused to give pregnant workers bathroom breaks and chairs
all the info you point out is in the first few paragraphs, much more context also provided as well as responses from amazon and context from the women
I'm talking about the actual lawsuit, which is linked in the article. That's what I was reading.
Amazon did grant extra breaks. The dispute is that they didn't grant them fast enough and that she expected to be paid for them, among other things.
Obviously nothing will ever satisfy people who are out for blood and would never give a corporation the benefit of the doubt, but I'm trying to point out that the headline's implication that pregnant workers weren't allowed any bathroom breaks is false.
It's not that "they didn't grant them fast enough". They made it unreasonably hard to request them.
> Despite the PWFA’s requirements, Amazon’s policy is to unlawfully demand medical documentation prior to granting predictable assessment requests and unreasonably does not provide predictable assessments to qualified employees pending such documentation.
I'm not "out for blood" but I would call this "refusing to give bathroom breaks" as well.
>this reporting could use a little less clickbait and little more details from the actual lawsuit
talking about the article
It didn't take long for people to appear in here to say it's not too bad.
HN has a sizable contingent of commenters who reliably show up to defend billion and trillion dollar corporations and reprehensible corporate behavior. I honestly can't explain it without alleging astroturf.
They see themselves as the future Musks and Bezos' of the world, or at the very least are either employed by, or have vested interests into their companies
I assume they're bots
Look, just because someone doesn't have a functioning soul doesn't mean they are a bot.
I'm going to say its bad, but especially bad for low paid blue collar workers. When I worked at McDonalds as a kid, a lot of crew would get pregnant and work until 8 months, and be gone for a couple of months, I don't know how they did it, and I don't know why it had to be like that.
Richer white collar workers have it better (much much much better), still not great. Our nation is just failing at this, I don't see Amazon being especially bad beyond the typical bad (which is already too bad). Best case is they just outsource their problem to the lowest bidder and the same or worse behavior happens.
This is the company that literally hired the Pinkertons and has been repeatedly fined millions for labor related violations, up to and including union busting. Consider me not even an iota of surprised.
> Consider me not even an iota of surprised.
Yeah, I followed this link specifically to see how many folks are surprised that Amazon may have did yet another vile thing to their employees, and I'm not one bit surprised to find nobody surprised by it. LOL!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitas_AB
I've gotta take the wind out of your sails a little bit on the "Pinkerton" name.
They still exist under the Pinkerton name, they’re just a subsidiary of Securitas AB:
Yes, people realizing that for themselves was the intent of my link. This discussion about trivia we're having right now is the only mojo left in the bottle.
It's the same parent company as the security guards at your local shopping mall. Pinkerton is like the "geek squad" brand of security.
Adults need permission to use a restroom?!
*slaves do. Amazon big shots must be laughing at these people who have no choice but to accept these work conditions to make ends meet, so hard. They must talk about these people like they are garbage, peasants, when Amazon yuppies are among themselves...
That's what shocked me the most when I was doing odd jobs, the contempt, the disdain.
At this point is anyone surprised at what Amazon will do to the plebeian workers that fuel them?
Lets wait and see why the pilot who overshot the runway didn't do a go-around instead of attempting to land, pressuring airplane pilots would certainly take them to another level in my eyes.
The pilots have union supposedly. I wonder if AMZN was able to break through here. May be it was "positive" pressure - i.e. bonuses for saving fuel/time/etc.
Another level, yes, but not a surprising one.
At this point, do people prefer to accept a claim in a lawsuit as the truth if it happens to conform to their model of reality?
So much of social media (low voted submissions here too) boils down to people fighting over ideological symbols or trying to hear a series of appropriate echoes. If you support the suit you probably "hate Amazon" and if you don't "You're a bootlicker".
The idea that you could not support Amazon or their practices, but also not take this lawsuit as some grand symbol of everything wrong with Amazon and the world is nuance most find repellent online, and increasingly offline.
Why reflexively side with Amazon on this? They've been known to engage in such anti-workers practice, and have spent millions on union-busting and other illegal stuff like this.
My comment does not indicate I sided with anyone, nor should anyone else solely based on the information the a claim in a lawsuit exists.
Yes, it's pretty clear that's a common pattern.
When it comes to a company known to hire union-busters rather than deal with a burgeoning union in good faith? Yes. Yes they do.
In any poor Eastern European country they would go for months-long paid leave long before the birth and then for months-long paid maternity leave.
If they decided to work during pregnancy they would get preferential treatment.
How are Americans not revolting against this bullshit is beyond me. The problem isn't even Amazon - it's the system that makes Amazon doing this shit even a possibility.
Meanwhile St. Bezos loudly complains that people are unfairly presenting billionaires as villains :)
...while looking like a discount Lex Luthor.
He doesn't even have a mustache to twirl for fucks sake!
The idea that non-pregnant people shouldn't also get to use the toilet seems baffling to me.
Maybe just let people use it when they need it.
No where is it written here they shouldn't
Not everything needs to be a panacea to cover all edge cases
Legally a specific situation is often required
Imo it is a phony obligation to fragment people via feigned ignorance and willful ignorance, create liquidity of a sort in the litigation market making everyone fight the same fires over and over but that is currently how it works
1. they shouldn't even have to work, they should be on a paid leave
2. if they want to work - they should have preferential treatment
3. even if they are not pregnant - their bathroom breaks or the ability to sit down shouldn't be limited by their employer
Reading about American work culture is uncanny. It's like people arguing about css-styling the NPE error stacktrace, and everybody just assumes the null dateOfBirth in the database and 5 levels of backend code without null checks is just how it has to be.
> 3. even if they are not pregnant - their bathroom breaks or the ability to sit down shouldn't be limited by their employer
See most retail workers, and anyone behind a cash register.
> See most retail workers, and anyone behind a cash register.
Yes, but only the people at the "coal face"
The managers in the background toilet at will.
> See most retail workers, and anyone behind a cash register.
Why would people behind cash register have to stand?
Sounds right. On the flip side there are jobs where random bathroom breaks don't really work.
EG: bus driver.
So I am actually not sure how that works for a pregnat bus driver. Letting her randomly stop the bus at rush hour to pee doesn't seem fair to the commuters. Probably in practice pregnant bus drivers get assigned to a short route or something like that.
I don't know the nature of Amazon warehouse work. It's possible that unscheduled bathroom breaks affect multiple people (eg, I am peeing and you are idle because you depend on me to do your task) - that's the only condition where this feels at all conscionable.
If you really wanted to optimize something involving living consciousness beings like a machine, at least you should consider things like the need to take a piss as a hard constraint and design the system around it.
Don't get me wrong I love factorio like the next guy and understand the idea behind your thinking, but there should be limits to that thinking in the real world. And if that doesn't convince you consider the efficiency loss of a depressed worker with a urinary tract infection.
Honestly - and I don't mean that as an insult - I hope for you to experience (just once) the loss of dignity that not being able to visit the restroom on your own decision will give you. Might make you realize the hell this kind of thinking leads to.
// Honestly - and I don't mean that as an insult - I hope for you to experience (just once) the loss of dignity that not being able to visit the restroom on your own decision will give you. Might make you realize the hell this kind of thinking leads to.
I am not insulated and I think my post was received stronger than I intended, with my point being simply that there are jobs where physical presence at a given moment is more significant than in knowledge work for example (say whatever you want, bus drivers and others defacto hold it in if possible to avoid disruptions at least here in NYC)
And to be frank even at my job which is very removed from bus driving or warehouse work there are moments where I would feel self-pressure to hold it in short of a dire emergency.
(Eg, I am on stage at a speaker panel or something like that where my absence would be visible and disruptive)
Are you on stage at a speaker panel 8 hours a day, every day? Because in the 8 hours a day case 'just holding' isn't an acceptable requirement.
Not going to discuss this further, but wanted to apologize for my message. I was annoyed and should've waited before sending. Sorry.
You've never been on a bus where the driver had to stop to go use the restroom? There is no prohibition against that.
Correct. In however long I've taken transit in NYC, I have never experienced a bus driver stepping out to pee, nor had a subway train held up for that reason. I am sure it happens, and I just read up on the rules around that - but the defacto is that this causes disruptions to passengers and the system and the employees do their best to hold it in and pee at the terminus.
I am glad that the rules allow bathroom breaks when emergent but the fact that people try to minimize it tells you something as well.
I grew up in Toronto, I've seen it a few times. When you gotta go, you gotta go.
Though more memorable was the gentleman singing out the stop names.
Turns out depending on the metro they already solved that problem.
Just let them piss.
They actually do let bus operators randomly stop the bus at rush hour to pee in some cities. In Ottawa (Ontario), for instance, as long as an operator is within their 5 minute "late standard" window, they can stop and make a quick pee break or Timmy's break as long as they keep the bus in time.
The busses lock down with a PIN when they get out of the seat (generated that morning at the depot) so you can't take it out of neutral anyways to try to steal it.
https://www.michaelsuddard.com/2013/03/oc-transpo-condoned-t...
(Best part is this old blogpost with someone cranky over the stop as well getting shown receipts by OC Transpo that their Tim's wielding bus driver that morning was in fact running on time based on GPS data.)
> The busses lock down with a PIN when they get out of the seat (generated that morning at the depot) so you can't take it out of neutral anyways to try to steal it.
Huh, it would never have occurred to me to raise the objection "but someone could steal the bus while the driver is in the bathroom!" Why does the bus need to stay in neutral with a special system of daily rotating PINs, rather than having the driver take their key to the bathroom with them?
Transit buses generally actually don't use keys, amusingly. You pop the drivers' window open and reach in for the manual door release, then climb on board.
The headlight switch is also the 'master on' switch for the bus, then you slap an engine starter button and off to the races you go. It's assumed you keep the bus stabled somewhere secure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GtuUBEeTVg
https://www.cleverdevices.com/products/secure-bus-access/
Clever Devices is one of the large players of the bus telematics industry and they just sit on the CANbus of the bus (heh!) and block the gear shift from being able to shift over it until you enter the PIN.
If you've ever played with a bus simulator, OMSI 2's Chicago Downtown addon requires you sign onto the bus to take it out of gear, too - you just look up and see the post-it note with that driver's ID and PIN ;)
> The busses lock down with a PIN when they get out of the seat (generated that morning at the depot)...
How do drivers remember their daily PIN?
When they show up to the depot and get their bus assignment they get a slip with the PIN (IIRC), otherwise they can call dispatch back up, identify themselves, and be given a reset remotely. (https://www.cleverdevices.com/products/secure-bus-access/)
Thank you for this informative comment.
Many bus routes are designed with stopping/break points, including limiting route lengths so that operators aren't stuck in these conditions.
Yes, at 5pm in a major city, a bus driver might pull up next to a convenience stop, stop the bus, go pee, and come back. Does it happen often? Not that often, because of the aforementioned "we design routes so people aren't trapped for multiple hours" concept.
Whether you're stowing, picking, diverting, or working the dock... you literally just grab someone to cover your position for a few minutes. That's it. There are process assistants present who can literally do that if they have to. There's no reason to deny a pregnant worker this except "This is making my day harder because I can't run my aisles at an absolute minimum head count and still stand around with my cart pretending to do useful work".
The only real case I could see where grabbing someone to cover you while you take a bathroom break might not work is, for example, someone working as a yard marshal... since that's not something everyone gets trained for, so the pool of replacements is smaller (including among process assistants).
So unless this worker was working the yard... there's not a lot of reason to deny them bathroom breaks... and that goes whether they're pregnant or not honestly.
look man you might just consider not commenting about stuff you know absolutely nothing about. it's totally ok to just not speak up and use it as an opportunity to learn.
Both jobs already need to be designed around some expectation for how often people need to use the restroom. If individual exceptions are not feasible, they design the job so that it works for everyone.
What the fuck?
Edit: Sorry to be brusque. You're suggesting that it's conscionable to disallow a bathroom break that would inconvenience customers or cause a fellow employee to be unable to progress? That category of work culture should be unheard of in the USA, but it's leaking in, and if we don't viciously reject it, we might as well start the country over.
If bathroom breaks are frequently causing some kind of unacceptable complication, then the problem isn't the bathroom break, it's the design of the position.
All he's saying is when Swift gets on stage and her drummer needs to pee, he's going to have to hold it instead of walking off stage in the middle of the song. Sometimes jobs require periods of required availability.
It amuses me when adults need permission to perform basic human needs because a small group will always take advantage of common courtesy and ruin it for everyone else.
When I was in grade school I pissed my pants in the library because the librarian wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. We both learned a lesson that day. I learned to seek forgiveness over permission, and she learned that sometimes kids aren't bullshitting when they say they need to use the bathroom.
We are all at the mercy of the bottom quintile.
I believe you have it reversed sir, we are at the mercy of the top 0.5% I doubt the librarian learned anything.
The warehouse manager certainly isn't in the top 0.5%. Ask yourself why bathroom break policies exist in the first place.
No the warehouse manager most definitely punches down, just like their boss wants them to. Don't punch down, punch up.
The warehouse manager has quotas very hard to meet without using illegal tactics like this, and the suits above picked someone psychopathic enough to fill that role, to ensure they would actually break the law to meet said quotas.