Amazon Told Drivers Not to Worry About In-Van Surveillance Cameras. Now Footage Is Leaking Online::undefined
It’s astounding how much money they will spend to not pay and treat their employees fairly.
Now, NOT DEFENDING AMAZONS BEHAVIOR OR THEIR DATA HANDLING PRACTICES.
However I do work for a company that has in vehicle cameras and DEAR GOD does it cut down on incidents. We kept having issues with drivers just doing dumb little things to try and save time. like knocking the shifter into neutral and pulling on the handbrake instead of pressing the button on the shifter and moving it into park. Just to be clear, the company has a really lax time/delivery expectation. If you work at a safe, reasonable pace and dont fuck up nobody gets upset with you. But senior management did the math that each driver had to drag out an extra 2 hours a day for it to cost us more than what we spent on compo/vehicle repairs the year before. Once the van had a camera, we saw a 70% reduction in incidents in the following 12 months.
You’re downvoted, but honestly, I understand what you’re saying.
My friends all think it’s fine to text and drive, even in their employers vehicles. If there was a camera, guaranteed they’d stop texting and driving and become way safer.
People don’t like it, obviously. I’d hate being watched. But there’s no doubt it cuts down on accidents.
Yeah thats all I’m saying, that even IF your only goal is to improve safety they absolutely work. If you’re also looking to micromanage, slavedrive and violate your staffs privacy you can use them for that too, but thats on you not to be evil.
Yeah, I work at a company that makes these kinds of cameras. Drivers hate them, but it really does enforce safe driving habits. This makes the roads a safer place, like it or not.
Brings insurance down a lottt too.
Someone I know is a dispatcher for a company that delivers for Amazon. He says that the management there piles on the deliveries in a way that he doesn’t think it’s possible for any of their drivers to do the full thing in the time allotted. Every day drivers come in 30-90 minutes late not being paid overtime, and he also has to stay because he has to stay until the last van is back.
Curious.
What are the incentives for the drivers to pull this time saving maneuver rather than doing it the right way?
No fucking idea, we’re all paid hourly. Some people like to flex on the others “I did 200 in 6 hours” and some really dont want to do overtime. Some also want to smash through their work and go grab a coffee and play with their phone for 2 hours.
I can jump on anyones route, go do their workload slowly and methodically and get back within an hour of clock off. You have to properly take the piss to get dragged into the bosses office.
That’s true, but Amazon pays above the national average, which itself desperately needs to rise.
This is a stronger indictment of the national work landscape than a boon for Amazon, who has a over 100% turnover rate…
Again, I agree.
I’m not an executive, if I could raise the national average for all of us believe me I would.
how can you have a turnover rate over 100%?
It’s a turnover rate over time. If everyone quit and had to be replaced in a day you’d be at 100%. Anything after that is over 100% for the year.
I’ve seen rates of 150% bandied around for Amazon. That means replacing 12.5% of your total headcount on average monthly.
I’m not great with math so please let me know if I’m understanding this right:
- Company has 100 employees
- All 100 employees quit
- Company gets 100 new employees as replacement
= 100% turnover rate
Then…
- Company has the 100 new employees
- 50 of the new employees quit
- Company gets 50 new employees as replacement
= 150% turnover rate
and so on?
It simply has to do with the number of lost/new employees in a year. So if you have 100 employees on your payroll and 100 quit over the course of a year, then you have 100% turnover. If 50, then 50/100 total employees = 50% turnover. It will be lower if less people left. Here’s the link where I learned this: https://www.aihr.com/blog/how-to-calculate-employee-turnover-rate/#:~:text=How to calculate annual turnover,%3D 0.05%2C or 5%25.
Turnover rates are usually described annually. If a company has to replace it’s whole staff twice in a year, that’s a 200% annual turnover rate.
Amazon pays pretty decently but it’s just god awful work. I worked in a warehouse briefly and made more than I had anywhere else entry level, but sorting boxes for 9 hours straight on night shifts isn’t worth it
Above the national average of what?
The average reported salary for delivery drivers.
Thanks. I thought they referring to salaries overall which didn’t pass the sniff test.
The nation
For that job, obviously
It wasn’t obvious as “Amazon” has a lot of jobs and these drivers aren’t even employed by Amazon in the first place.
Amazon has lots of jobs, yes. But context is king.
If I say “Developers stay at Facebook because Meta pays them above average”, will you be confused on who is “them” because Meta has many jobs? Will you think that maybe they’re saying that Meta pays janitors above average?
It’s not a difficult thing to understand by context.
Again, these drivers aren’t even Amazon employees, so yes it is confusing when someone says something as vague as “Amazon pays above the national average” when discussing people who specifically don’t work for Amazon.
Shit
Ribbit
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Amazon insisted that the program was about safety only, and that workers shouldn’t be worried about their privacy: “Don’t believe the self-interested critics who claim these cameras are intended for anything other than safety,”
Someone needs to punch this spokesperson in the face. It’s one thing to lie, but lying in such a smug, smarmy way to paint critics as overreacting and ignorant makes it so much more infuriating.
You know spokespeople don’t come up with what needs to be communicated? They just word the announcement. Someone tells them what to say and they just write it.
Yeah yeah. More outsourcing so nobody can be held responsible for anything. What do you think the purpose of a spokesperson is? They speak for the company.
You know what we used to call Nazi sympathizers, back in the day? Nazis.
I mean, everyone involved works or contacts for Amazon here. The spokesman is just paid to say the words they tell him to.
It was some other asshole in the company that said, “tell the spokesman to say we’ll never use them for anything other than safety and get me America’s Funniest Home Videos on the line. Are they still a thing? You know what, on second thought just call the internet, tell them I’m going to have some good clips for them soon.”
I’m sorry, who’s surprised the company notorious for tracking employee bathroom breaks is actively monitoring their employees?
Amazon is the absolute scum of the earth when it comes to how they demand and expect productivity from their workers. Being harassed because you took 10 minutes to shit in a 10 hour shift that wasn’t your break or lunch is an every day occurrence.
It’s odd, the words “employee” and “employees” gets used here pretty often, but Amazon itself goes through a lot of effort to have people as contractors. I know, employees of the contractor…but still. These gig jobs are just a great way to shift liability and evade responsibility by the company itself. “We tell you exactly what, where, and how you do everything you do…but you’re not one of us”
Shocking /s
Someone please sue the shit out of Amazon.
It won’t change anything. It’s the US! Amazon will lose, and will be “punished” by having to pay like $2 for each affected employee.
Well, at least we can all rest assured that all the driver monitoring cameras/tech that’s being build by default into new consumer cars and trucks will only ever be used for safety.
It’s 100% Amazon leaking these videos. They said themselves, the video system is secure.
Stores do it with shoplifters to convince customers not to steal.
Insurance companies do it with videos of workers’ comp. fraudsters to convince workers not to report injuries.
Amazon is doing it this now to turn public opinion against drivers as they have been organizing with the Teamsters, which is about to strike.
Bingo!
I always assume any Ring footage I see is just an Amazon plant anymore, too. They’re evil as fuck. Now excuse me, my prime order’s here.
I’m so glad I have a career where I’ll never have to worry about crap like this. I’d love to see how the higher ups would like it if they had to be on camera the whole day with AI watching them for mistakes/phone usage.
As a Canadian singer once said: never say never.
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Could you elaborate? If John Smith gets a speeding ticket, all other drivers get a video of it in a “Don’t be like John” email? There must be so many drivers, so surely it can’t be “all” of them.
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So its specifically a tool to shame drivers? I don’t see how these videos could ever help with safety?
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Is there a third party security handler for this data or is amazon keeping this in house like a bunch of lunatics?
Surprised Pikachu Face
I said don’t worry about it…I didn’t say we weren’t using cameras anyway.
I don’t see the issue, most people at work know they are being watched. Clearly y’all have never had an item stolen by a driver before.
The problem is not the camera, the problem is that amazon is not doing much to preserve the privacy if its employees from these leaks
Actually, I do have a problem with the camera.
And we know that how?
Amazon is a very very large company, completely sealing up something like that would be next to impossible.
Note this doesn’t meant they shouldn’t try, only that I personally recognize the scope of the issue at hand.
Hopefully they find the source of these leaks soon though and patch up their privacy better for the drivers sake, but it’s very likely it’s just another Amazon worker leaking these.
Amazon is a very very large company, completely sealing up something like that would be next to impossible.
Are you shitting me?
This driver is clearly identifiable. You pull up their manager’s information… Look for a Joey (name mentioned in the video) and then interview them. They will give up the three other names or you fire Joey. Then you can punish all 4 of the people who partook in this data leak.
This is NOT “next to impossible”. Not even close. Access records could easily be stored in relation to these videos. Information on who’s reviewing the videos is trivial to store as metadata.
The data leaks aren’t coming from the drivers…so I’m not sure how interviewing the victims who likely don’t even know it’s leaked, would help.I misunderstood the source of the leaks, it was a guy holding his phone at a screen.
Did I say to interview the victim?
The people talking in the video are the knuckleheads that were taking the recording.
Yep, my mistake I misunderstood the people talking in the article were workers filming it on a phone. That should be a lot easier to find, but does nothing to disprove that stopping stuff like a single dude sneaking a phone to work gets harder with the amount of dudes you employ.
We know that because we’re watching these videos online even though we don’t work for Amazon. The proof is in the pudding.
I don’t think that a driver facing camera increases the safety of package delivery whatsoever. All it can detect is whether a delivery person is driving, perhaps how they are driving and that’s it.
A delivery person can exit the car, take a package of (potential) value out and do whatever. You can still be caught taking the package away from the customer if you do not take it to the customers door first and then not announce yourself. Or make a photo to “confirm” that the package made it to the door.
Well agree to disagree then, you’re under the clock it’s pretty normal to be monitored for a variety of reasons.
Hate me if you want, and I agree with the issue with the leaks themselves, but being watched at work isn’t some dystopian nightmare.
It doesn’t feel dystopian because it’s basically normalized as your comment shows. Being watched at work permanently through camera supervision specifically. Being watched at work on occasion or your work being checked is indeed normal.
Ferris has told me via DM that the cameras do not film permanently but instead start recording footage when the car is jerking around because that could result in broken packages and Amazon is trying to cover their ass. However this system could be intentionally or unintentionally too sensitive.
