Warehouse workers at Amazon have been organizing, winning union elections, and staging strikes to demand better working conditions. One worker is trying something new. Daniel Olayiwola will be the first warehouse worker in company history to present his own resolution at the annual shareholder meeting.
Olayiwola got the right to bring a resolution after buying Amazon stock. A picker who has worked at warehouses in Florida and Texas since the beginning of the year is calling for an end to productivity targets for all Amazon warehouse and delivery workers, including drivers and other third-party contractors. His proposed resolution specifically calls out Amazon's controversial Time Off Task policy, which penalizes workers who rack up a certain number of minutes without scanning a product. He wants an end to the rate system and the number of products employees are expected to scans per hour. Workers who accrue too much TOT are at risk of being terminated.
Olayiwola claims that the system drives workers to exhaustion and injury. He argues that the data supports him. The Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of labor unions, found that serious injuries at Amazon were more than double those at non-Amazon warehouses last year. The company says that its injury rate went up from 2020 to 2021, but that its recordable injury rate went down from the year before.
The proposal is one of more than a dozen on the docket this year concerning environmental and social issues such as working conditions, diversity, equity, inclusion, and the abuse of technologies such as facial recognition. The board of Amazon has advised against voting on every environmental and social proposal it issued a recommendation for.
WIRED spoke to Olayiwola about his tenure at Amazon, his background as an Army medic, and why he thinks it's important to put workers' issues in front of shareholders. The interview has been edited to make it clearer.
Your proposal addresses working conditions for workers in Amazon's warehouse and distribution network. What does it mean to be a picker at Amazon?
The picker selects the items. You stand at your station for 10 hours, usually two and a half to three hours at a time, picking items at a rate of no less than 300 to 350 an hour. They are going to send you a message or come see you if you drop below that. During the second part of the day, you need to speed it up.
I have to prepare two lunches because I am not leaving the building for a break. Olayiwola gets one 30-minute break and two 15-minute breaks.
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