The online giant is creating thousands of UK jobs, so why are some employees less than happy?
Inside
the warehouse, Amazon employees wear blue badges and the workers
supplied by the agencies wear green badges. In the most basic roles they
perform the same tasks as each other for the same pay of £6.20 an hour
or so (the minimum adult wage is £6.19), but the Amazon workers also
receive a pension and shares. A former agency worker said the prospect
of winning a blue badge, “like a carrot, was dangled constantly in front
of us by management in return for meeting shift targets”. Amazon’s
Darwinian culture comes from the top. Jeff Bezos, its chief executive,
told Forbes magazine last year (when it named him “number one CEO in
America”): “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to
shove, we’ll settle for intense.”
