Amazon has released a statement responding to repeat allegations that its delivery drivers have been forced to urinate in plastic bottles while working.
Per The Independent, the company put out a statement to the press after the official Amazon News Twitter account responded to Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan.
Pocan was himself responding to a tweet from Amazon's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations & Customer Service Dave Clark.
Clark had taken to the social media platform to address comments from one of Amazon's biggest critics, Bernie Sanders. However, Pocan responded to Clark by writing:
"Paying workers $15/hr doesn't make you a 'progressive workplace' when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles."
Seemingly unimpressed by Pocan's allegation, the company replied: "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."
Representatives added: "We hope you can enact policies that get other employers to offer what we already do."
However, these tweets have since been labeled an "own goal" by the company, after people claiming to be former employees of the company spoke out about being caught short while on shift and resorting to urinate in a bottle.
One Twitter user wrote: "I worked for Amazon. I no longer do. I worked at a facility that staged deliveries for drivers. We frequently found bottles with pee returned in the bags and, if we had to go police the grounds for trash, some drivers just threw them out when returning to the property."
A second added: "Believe it? Every other delivery van I got assigned had one like it was complimentary, so why believe when you lived it baybeeee".
Following the backlash, Amazon has said in a press release, per The Independent: "This was an own-goal, we’re unhappy about it, and we owe an apology to Representative Pocan.
"The tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers."
The statement continued: "We 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."
Amazon concluding by saying how it "would like to solve" the issue.
But Pocan was clearly unimpressed with the apology and responded by saying: "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."
