Amazon's "Pivot" Program Takes Employees to Court

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In the latest news about being an Amazon employee, Business Insider is reporting on the "Pivot" program. The Pivot program was introduced last year, and many employees are protesting the "performance-improving" program. Underperforming employees under the pivot program have three choices, quit and receive severance pay, spend then next couple months proving their worth by meeting goals set by the manager, or face a panel of peers in a courtroom-style video conference where the employee and their boss present the arguments about their performance, and then receive a decision. The article notes that 70% of employees lost those trials, and severance pay is only usually offered when "it's not your fault."

I wonder what would happen if you peed in a bottle during the video-trial?

Under the Pivot program, employees choose either one manager or three non-managers as their jury, Bloomberg reported. They're also allowed to dismiss some panelists if they think the panelists will be unsympathetic to their case, according to Bloomberg. But overall, the employee doesn't get to select the jurors.
 
a company predominantly run by robots more than likely dont want humans and their "errors" anywhere near the warehouse floor.
So i suspect they want a high turnover which leaves alot of time gaps in between hiring people, to save money.
 
Well, I'm hoping robots will finally be here to replace all jobs so humans can do what humans are actually supposed to do; creative things.
 
It doesn't explicitly say what level of employment this is being used on, nor does it make it clear if "performance-improvement plan" is about continuously improving performance or if it's a nice way of addressing those who are making more problems than solutions.

I would say as an employer that you need to accept that the bottom half of society does not intend to "continuously improve". In fact, our entire career system is based on the assumption that most people will not strive for greatness, which allows those who do to move up quickly. You don't have to be smart to be successful, usually just being aggressive is enough to at least move up. Smartness will determine how far you can move up, but an aggressive person can usually move up in some amount.

But this is Business Insider, so I expect it to be vague enough to bias me towards hating those who have more success than me, and those who have more authority than me. It's a shame.
 
I would suspect that the improving part meant meeting a certain and hopefully obtainable productivity level. All the companies I worked for have kept metrics, IBM kept them but did not use the data. My metrics at adaptec showed I was 300% on average faster than 10 of my India counterparts doing similar work. But none the less the majority of us were laid off about 5k in one day. Personally if had the ability would have fired easily 25% of employees I worked with at IBM. NetApp was a little better and would have been around the 5%.
 
Azphira said:
Bezos isn't Dr. Evil, he is evil personified. Probably why that one eye bulges, it's the evil trying to escape.
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Sshhh. Don't talk about it.

AQTr4Qw.jpg
 
gxp500 said:
Modern slavery.
Keep improving, work faster, faster, faster. People are not robots, they can't keep constantly improving and doing work faster and faster. Seems like turnover must be pretty high at amazon.
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Possibly... although the flip side is it keeps people from getting too fucking lazy on the job. The other day went to Ikea to buy a kitchen sink (yeah don't ask, it was the exact shape/style I wanted), unfortunately that sink wasn't available for me to pull from their warehouse I had to first pay for it, then someone "in the back" would pull it from the employee only warehouse. So I go and sit and wait for my item, along with others, and there were maybe 4 items that went before me, and it took just over an hour from the time I paid (when my order was officially in the system) before someone wheeled it out on a cart, and this wasn't just me either, everyone else who was waiting was waiting for over an hour as well, some complained and then got 4 guys around one computer monitor to try and "figure out what was going on" (translation: Lets look like we're doing something to please the customer), and I watched the shit that was wheel out for people before me, 4-5 flat boxes similar to the shit you pick yourself off the shelves perhaps a tad big, but nothing super oversized that you'd think they needed to use a forklift or anything. Now I'm sure there could have been other reasons why it took so long but peeking in the back it did look like the people who's job it was to get shit weren't exactly putting much effort into their job. And unfortunately for these big box stores, whether it's Ikea, Walmart, Home Depot, etc, sure they add quite a few jobs to the local community but more often than not a lot of those workers seriously drag ass and no it's not a form of modern slavery, if your job is to put shit in a box and roll it out on a cart, then fucking do it with little bit of effort, I'm not saying run run run so you're exhausted at the end of the day, but act like you want to work there.

Now Amazon opening up warehouses near big population centers you probably will see a LOT of this kind of shit.
 
You can never just look at something or read about it and know if it is positive or negative. You have to see it for yourself AND observe it for a long time. And that is where the problem comes in. IMHO I think what amazon is doing here is actually really cool. You are actually getting a chance to defend yourself if you so choose. How many other companies allow that? Nope any place I have ever worked for calls you down tells you to beat it and escorts you out. Here you are getting a lot of choice, about 2 more choices than most businesses will give you.

Working is complex. a long time ago I worked for home depot, and it could take a while to get your stuff. Why? Well about 80% of the employees were good and trying to get the job done. But the fact was in their effort to reduce costs HD just didn't have enough people on the floor. Now throw in the fact that you have a ton of safety factors to deal with and things take long. You had to have a spotter to use a fork lift, you had to close off 2 - 3 aisles which caused further delays for everyone. To any random customer they would think people were being lazy or it was too slow but the reality is there just weren't enough workers to do their job, service the customer, and meet the random other jobs that needed to be done.

Ultimately the point is its up to amazon to make sure that these policies and methods are being used well. Just a like a survey, a performance review, or anything there are many ways to corrupt it and many ways to use it very effectively.
 
Scumbags. That is why I "soft protest" Amazon. Main reason is they're more expensive than their competitors for many things and are slow as hell to ship which are the main reasons I've cut out most Amazon shopping. But even if the price/shipping is the same, I'll look elsewhere first.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Possibly... although the flip side is it keeps people from getting too fucking lazy on the job.
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Yes and no, i work in this type of environment where performance/efficiency/accuracy is measured by the minute and posted for everyone to see. Luckily i'm one of the few who can do it blindfolded and still come out on top, those who can't aren't lazy they just don't have that talent that i have, i'm just good at what i do. Telling those who have lower performance to work faster is kind of pointless since it'll just stress them out more and they'll make more mistakes.
From a managers point of view this is great, survival of the fittest, but how long before the fittest throw in the towel?
 
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kromc5 said:
I would suspect that the improving part meant meeting a certain and hopefully obtainable productivity level. All the companies I worked for have kept metrics, IBM kept them but did not use the data. My metrics at adaptec showed I was 300% on average faster than 10 of my India counterparts doing similar work. But none the less the majority of us were laid off about 5k in one day. Personally if had the ability would have fired easily 25% of employees I worked with at IBM. NetApp was a little better and would have been around the 5%.
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If it's just to keep the slackers in line, then I applaud it. It sucks when you have to take up the slack for loafers; especially when they're from one of the ever increasing "protected classes" that "can't be fired". Now if it's to make people compete with automation, then that's entirely another matter.
 
TorxT3D said:
a company predominantly run by robots more than likely dont want humans and their "errors" anywhere near the warehouse floor.
So i suspect they want a high turnover which leaves alot of time gaps in between hiring people, to save money.
Click to expand...

high turn over also allows low pay but allows you to create employee incentive to make a job seem better than it really is... e.g. offer raises for X time worked but create a work environment where employee's will never reach X. plenty of companies already do this shit and rely heavily on having a high turn over rate.
 
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rudy said:
You can never just look at something or read about it and know if it is positive or negative. You have to see it for yourself AND observe it for a long time. And that is where the problem comes in. IMHO I think what amazon is doing here is actually really cool. You are actually getting a chance to defend yourself if you so choose. How many other companies allow that? Nope any place I have ever worked for calls you down tells you to beat it and escorts you out. Here you are getting a lot of choice, about 2 more choices than most businesses will give you.

Working is complex. a long time ago I worked for home depot, and it could take a while to get your stuff. Why? Well about 80% of the employees were good and trying to get the job done. But the fact was in their effort to reduce costs HD just didn't have enough people on the floor. Now throw in the fact that you have a ton of safety factors to deal with and things take long. You had to have a spotter to use a fork lift, you had to close off 2 - 3 aisles which caused further delays for everyone. To any random customer they would think people were being lazy or it was too slow but the reality is there just weren't enough workers to do their job, service the customer, and meet the random other jobs that needed to be done.

Ultimately the point is its up to amazon to make sure that these policies and methods are being used well. Just a like a survey, a performance review, or anything there are many ways to corrupt it and many ways to use it very effectively.
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Any union job allows people to defend themselves from being fired. It is in the contract the employer needs to show just cause - including sustained poor performance.

As a former Union Stewart I perhaps see this differently.

I see this as trying to protect themselves from litigation.

1) If you go quietly and sign here we will give you a pittance.
2) If you drop on your knees right now and do every other thing I tell you bitch I might let you keep your job - but dont forget who has the power here - NO TEETH.
3) If you convince all these carefully selected suck ups to spare you we might let you stay in the club but dont forget you owe them and we are going to need a favor back some day.

Of course there could be other ways to view the program.

I absolutely agree that an employer has the right to set performance goals and metrics - so long as they are realistic and attainable in the real world.
 
Come on guys, poor old Amazon just wants to make money- capitalism yay!!! AmIrightorwhat???
 
It doesn't end there. I recommend people here apply to their local Whole Foods for fun. I cancelled my prime membership a year back. Though I have had to buy one or two things here and there, what makes it so easy for me is that BH Photo has great prices, free shipping, and doesn't charge me tax. For other non-tech stuff, Walmart has been better. (Yes, at this moment, Amazon << Walmart.)
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
high turn over also allows low pay but allows you to create employee incentive to make a job seem better than it really is... e.g. offer raises for X time worked but create a work environment where employee's will never reach X. plenty of companies already do this shit and rely heavily on having a high turn over rate.
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Many, many years ago I worked at Radio Shack.
We where paid on commission, but the commission structure was so low, I almost always made minimum wage.
While I made more per hour when I worked fast food, the Radio Shack job was much easier as we didn't get much business.

There was only a manager and 2 employees.
On the rare occasion when one of us made a large sale early in the week, we would pass all the large sales to that person, when they where working, so they could actually collect some commission and make more than minimum wage. :D
 
I don't understand how Amazon can expect to find enough people to fulfill their dream of having warehouses full of "UPS Guy" levels of enthusiasm. They're just stressing people out. Lots of large/chain companies do this exact same thing. I've worked for many, and it's remarkable that they even find enough douchebags to fulfill the management team which berates people on a daily basis. Unfortunately, lots of people don't know how to defend themselves when pressured by the middle management dinosaur, and don't have the opportunities to quit for.
 
Cylocybin said:
do you disagree with their tactics and still shop their site?
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Oh hell no. I shop a lot of B&M, but when I have to go to the 'net, I use Barnes&Noble, Wal-mart, B&H Photo, Adorama, Newegg, WholeLatteLove ...
anyone but Amazon, basically.
 
nutzo said:
Say good by to the no taxes, as that is being changed soon. :(
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It depends on where you live. Some states (Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon) don't charge sales taxes.
California on the other hand charges 7.25% plus local add-ons. But New York State only charges 4%.
 
Elf_Boy said:
Any union job allows people to defend themselves from being fired. It is in the contract the employer needs to show just cause - including sustained poor performance.

As a former Union Stewart I perhaps see this differently.

I see this as trying to protect themselves from litigation.

1) If you go quietly and sign here we will give you a pittance.
2) If you drop on your knees right now and do every other thing I tell you bitch I might let you keep your job - but dont forget who has the power here - NO TEETH.
3) If you convince all these carefully selected suck ups to spare you we might let you stay in the club but dont forget you owe them and we are going to need a favor back some day.

Of course there could be other ways to view the program.

I absolutely agree that an employer has the right to set performance goals and metrics - so long as they are realistic and attainable in the real world.
Click to expand...

Yes and if you go back to my first sentence you will see the point. Since you brought up the union its a great example. Is a union a good or bad thing? Once again you gotta be there in the trenches to know, you have to see it playing out. On one hand the union could protect employees and give them collective power to defend themselves from abusive employers, on the other hand if the scales tip to far it could become corrupt think Hoffa or more simply just doing what I have witnessed unions do so much and that is protect completely lazy incompetent employees and deny better employees access to jobs. In real life, its not about the method, its about the execution. I could live in a communist country if it was executed right, and I could be part of any company with any business model if good people were generally making good decisions. And on the flip side I could be leaving any company with any business model if they were doing it wrong. You know its funny execution is so important that a lot of times a company that was doing great starts failing for what people consider to be no apparent reason. Actually GE might be a good example of that. Sometimes its as simple as the people executing the plan just aren't doing a good job when they or their predecessors used to be doing very well. That's why the most important thing for anyone to do is to make the right or best decision as often as possible.
 
This is just one anecdotal story, but I've also heard this from other individuals who have worked for the company so these are not small incidences but more of a corporate wide narrative:

Amazon employee here.

They don't monitor bathroom breaks, but you'r individual rate (or production goal) dosnt account for bathroom breaks, or... let's say there is a problem like you need 2 of something and there's only one left, well you have to put on your "andon"... wait for someone to come "fix" for you, all the while your rate is dropping. The 2 most common reasons pepole get fired are not hitting rate, and attendance. They don't really try to help you hit rate, they just fire and replace.

My first week there 2 pepole collapsed from dehydration. It's so common place to see someone collapse that nobody is even shocked anymore. You'll just hear a manager complain that he has to do some report now, while a couple of new pepole try to help the guy ( veterans won't risk helping becuse it drips rate). No sitting allowed, and there's nowhere to sit anywhere except the break rooms. Before the robots (they call them kivas) pickers would regularly walk 10-15 miles a day, now it's just stand for 10-12 hours a day.

Pepole complain about the heat all the time but we just get told 80 degrees ( Fahrenheit obviously) is a safe working temp. Some times they will pull out a thermometer, but even when it hits 85 they just say it's fine.

There's been deaths, at least one in my building... Amazon likes to keep it all hush hush. Heard about others, you can find the stories if you search for it, but Amazon does a good job burying it.

Every now and we have an inspection, where stuff like this should be cought and changed. But they just pretty it up. If the pepole doing the inspection looked at numbers on inspection day vs normal operation, they would see a massive difference... but no fucks givin.

The truth is the warehouses operate at a loss most the time, Amazon literly can't afford to pay the workers decent pay, and can't afford to not work them to death. The entire bussnius model is dependent on cheep (easily replacable) labor, which is why tier 1s are the bulk of the Amazon work force. My building has like 3-5k workers most the time and around 10-30k on the holiday ( what they call peak). Almost all of that is tier 1, most states have 4-7 of these warehouses, and some like Texas and Arizona have tons more.

Next time you order something off Amazon, remember it was put in that box buy a guy sweating his ass off trying to put 100-250 things in a box per hour, for 10 hours a day or he will be fired, making about a dollar more than minimum wage. Might have even been a night shift guy, who goes to work at 630pm and gets off at 5am.
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And this isn't just isolated in our neck of the woods, even in the UK there are eye witness reports of warehouse pickers peeing in bottles for fear of missing their productivity goals, and as one employee eloquently puts it, "You have to go through security when you leave the warehouse, and that adds five minutes. It's like an airport — belt off, watch off. The atmosphere is what I imagine a prison feels like. You felt like you were walking on eggshells." Amazon staff had to meet productivity targets which, according to Bloodworth, were only feasible if you ran around the warehouse - something Amazon didn't allow for health and safety reasons. If that shouldn't scare you guys, how about wearing a wristband that tracks all of your movements in the warehouse and buzz your hand when you're making incorrect movements. I can't make this shit up!

And you wouldn't think this type of culture wouldn't effect the white collars, however, it was common to see employees (male even) crying at their work desk and for Bo Olson, this was just a common theme:

Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”
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So this latest attempt by Amazon Bezos, it's just another corporate coup d'etat to strip extract every ounce of blood from their employees while at the same inducing daily fear and anxiety through an Orwellian inquisition:

A panel of peers in a courtroom-style video-conference, in which the employee and his or her boss present arguments about whether the employee should stay in the Pivot program

I seriously hope you guys are understanding the scope and magnitude of where this is leading to. This race to the bottom through a corporate slave style culture is quite literally killing us. Self worth should not be tied to the type of job you are doing, nor should working 60-80 hours a week. Hell, even in feudalism the serfs got 3 days off and spent time with their families. I bet there are quite a few men working today who would find that appealing. But the sad reality is gentleman, with automation replacing more and more jobs every year, layoffs will continue, more men and women will find their choices limited to where they seek employment which should come as no surprise why many of those poor souls can't simply pack their bags and find a new job. In the end, Bezos has the resources and the lawyers so he's going to win this case, if not in the short term but in the long term when all of those jobs will be automated, and sadly I'm one of those individuals who wants 100% of jobs to be done by robots so we can start doing whatever it is we should have been doing a long time ago: Learn and play and take care of each other. But that's not our world and it's going to be interesting as we go deeper into the 21st century when 90 million Americans will be unemployed and pissed off at their government... or should I say corporate owners, how are they going to respond?

A question for the philosophers I suppose.
 
gxp500 said:
Modern slavery.
Keep improving, work faster, faster, faster. People are not robots, they can't keep constantly improving and doing work faster and faster. Seems like turnover must be pretty high at amazon.
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The worst part is that you have people in these jobs that pride themselves on these work environments. They love the cutthroat, dog eat dogness of it all. It's just a fucking job. Our society has a real sickness in it when these types of companies are considered "good places to work"
 
Damn this is bad. But work place bullshit is getting worse. Here is my story.

I work for aquisitoin for AT&T. AT&T also has fiber team, so they split our team and hired bunch of new people in to fiber roles. almost half aquisition and half fiber. I have 4 different quota buckets, I am required to sell 6200-6500 in fiber/security, and on top it includes cell phone activations, land line renewals and application revenue. So the fiber guys only have to sell any fiber product or security and their quota issssss 3000! Thats it and they never have to deal with any escalations as I am assigned to territory and have many more responsibilities. All they do is sell and get paid and hunt anywhere, I have to stay in my territory.

So lets just take my 4 quota buckets and compare it to their 1 bucket and even that bucket is half the revenue that I have to generate. Same or higher salary pay, same benefits! just sell 3000 in revenue and get paid 2500 in commission. If they sell as much as me they make 5k commission. Its nearly impossible for people in my position to make higher than 2500 by the time we wrap up all buckets lol.

They lowered our quota this year by 1000 to make us happier compared to fiber guys but still double their qouta + other shit.

There is not one person that would say that is fair game. Every day it feels like a slap in the face. What we get is pat on the back for making less money lol!

Let me be clear, this is a mess they cant clean up and managers are understanding they feel for us, and we respect the fiber folks we don't hate on them for making more, work place environment is very supportive. Heck even the guys in fiber role tell us they wouldn't do our job. Its such a big income gap, totally unfair.

At the end of the day money pays bills. AT&T fucked up big time when they started this position and pissed off veterans. I haven't been in this position for long, about a year. But I have seen so many people leave. Almost everyone has negative opinion of our position since they did this.

I mean who wouldn't like open hunting, small as quota. Higher salary, same benefits. I am moving and will likely be quitting and finding something else after I move, but I do love management though. They are usually very understanding and work environment is friendly. I can't believe why but if I can transfer I would probably still keep the job even though I hate this gap in responsibility and the inability to make more.

If AT&T did this I would have given a middle finger and told them to write me a check and I will find something else. lol
 
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So I want to see some stats on this.

What percentage of employees are stuck on the pivot program?

We're dealing with blue collar workers here. I'm not saying they are less motivated, but they are certainly more likely to get into trouble when it's easy to replace that job that has at best mediocre pay.

If we are dealing with 5% of the amazon warehouse population I would say thats reasonable given the talent pool they are picking from.

I don't like Amazon's other practices like lack of bathrooms which might get them in trouble with osha. But this one might pass muster.
 
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mynamehere said:
If it's just to keep the slackers in line, then I applaud it. It sucks when you have to take up the slack for loafers; especially when they're from one of the ever increasing "protected classes" that "can't be fired". Now if it's to make people compete with automation, then that's entirely another matter.
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velusip said:
I don't understand how Amazon can expect to find enough people to fulfill their dream of having warehouses full of "UPS Guy" levels of enthusiasm. They're just stressing people out. Lots of large/chain companies do this exact same thing. I've worked for many, and it's remarkable that they even find enough douchebags to fulfill the management team which berates people on a daily basis. Unfortunately, lots of people don't know how to defend themselves when pressured by the middle management dinosaur, and don't have the opportunities to quit for.
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they hire anyone that can breath and sadly in a lot of communities there are plenty of people that will do anything for a job.. i don't recommend amazon as a long term job but if you need something to atleast put on a resume to potentially get a better job it's worth it.
 
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