Amazon refused to give pregnant workers bathroom breaks
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The word "bathroom" shows up a lot but that doesn't appear core to the lawsuit. I think an editor was engineering the headline for maximum clickbait to link back to the previous Amazon bathroom break stories.
Regardless of what you think about Amazon, this reporting could use a little less clickbait and little more details from the actual lawsuit.
That was exactly the point, or the worker would have requested vacation.
Stop kissing corporate's ass.
all the info you point out is in the first few paragraphs, much more context also provided as well as responses from amazon and context from the women
Amazon did grant extra breaks. The dispute is that they didn't grant them fast enough and that she expected to be paid for them, among other things.
Obviously nothing will ever satisfy people who are out for blood and would never give a corporation the benefit of the doubt, but I'm trying to point out that the headline's implication that pregnant workers weren't allowed any bathroom breaks is false.
> Despite the PWFA’s requirements, Amazon’s policy is to unlawfully demand medical documentation prior to granting predictable assessment requests and unreasonably does not provide predictable assessments to qualified employees pending such documentation.
I'm not "out for blood" but I would call this "refusing to give bathroom breaks" as well.
talking about the article
Richer white collar workers have it better (much much much better), still not great. Our nation is just failing at this, I don't see Amazon being especially bad beyond the typical bad (which is already too bad). Best case is they just outsource their problem to the lowest bidder and the same or worse behavior happens.
Yeah, I followed this link specifically to see how many folks are surprised that Amazon may have did yet another vile thing to their employees, and I'm not one bit surprised to find nobody surprised by it. LOL!
I've gotta take the wind out of your sails a little bit on the "Pinkerton" name.
It's the same parent company as the security guards at your local shopping mall. Pinkerton is like the "geek squad" brand of security.
That's what shocked me the most when I was doing odd jobs, the contempt, the disdain.
The idea that you could not support Amazon or their practices, but also not take this lawsuit as some grand symbol of everything wrong with Amazon and the world is nuance most find repellent online, and increasingly offline.
If they decided to work during pregnancy they would get preferential treatment.
How are Americans not revolting against this bullshit is beyond me. The problem isn't even Amazon - it's the system that makes Amazon doing this shit even a possibility.
Maybe just let people use it when they need it.
Not everything needs to be a panacea to cover all edge cases
Legally a specific situation is often required
Imo it is a phony obligation to fragment people via feigned ignorance and willful ignorance, create liquidity of a sort in the litigation market making everyone fight the same fires over and over but that is currently how it works
2. if they want to work - they should have preferential treatment
3. even if they are not pregnant - their bathroom breaks or the ability to sit down shouldn't be limited by their employer
Reading about American work culture is uncanny. It's like people arguing about css-styling the NPE error stacktrace, and everybody just assumes the null dateOfBirth in the database and 5 levels of backend code without null checks is just how it has to be.
See most retail workers, and anyone behind a cash register.
Yes, but only the people at the "coal face"
The managers in the background toilet at will.
Why would people behind cash register have to stand?
EG: bus driver.
So I am actually not sure how that works for a pregnat bus driver. Letting her randomly stop the bus at rush hour to pee doesn't seem fair to the commuters. Probably in practice pregnant bus drivers get assigned to a short route or something like that.
I don't know the nature of Amazon warehouse work. It's possible that unscheduled bathroom breaks affect multiple people (eg, I am peeing and you are idle because you depend on me to do your task) - that's the only condition where this feels at all conscionable.
Don't get me wrong I love factorio like the next guy and understand the idea behind your thinking, but there should be limits to that thinking in the real world. And if that doesn't convince you consider the efficiency loss of a depressed worker with a urinary tract infection.
Honestly - and I don't mean that as an insult - I hope for you to experience (just once) the loss of dignity that not being able to visit the restroom on your own decision will give you. Might make you realize the hell this kind of thinking leads to.
I am not insulated and I think my post was received stronger than I intended, with my point being simply that there are jobs where physical presence at a given moment is more significant than in knowledge work for example (say whatever you want, bus drivers and others defacto hold it in if possible to avoid disruptions at least here in NYC)
And to be frank even at my job which is very removed from bus driving or warehouse work there are moments where I would feel self-pressure to hold it in short of a dire emergency.
(Eg, I am on stage at a speaker panel or something like that where my absence would be visible and disruptive)
I am glad that the rules allow bathroom breaks when emergent but the fact that people try to minimize it tells you something as well.
Though more memorable was the gentleman singing out the stop names.
Just let them piss.
They actually do let bus operators randomly stop the bus at rush hour to pee in some cities. In Ottawa (Ontario), for instance, as long as an operator is within their 5 minute "late standard" window, they can stop and make a quick pee break or Timmy's break as long as they keep the bus in time.
The busses lock down with a PIN when they get out of the seat (generated that morning at the depot) so you can't take it out of neutral anyways to try to steal it.
https://www.michaelsuddard.com/2013/03/oc-transpo-condoned-t...
(Best part is this old blogpost with someone cranky over the stop as well getting shown receipts by OC Transpo that their Tim's wielding bus driver that morning was in fact running on time based on GPS data.)
Huh, it would never have occurred to me to raise the objection "but someone could steal the bus while the driver is in the bathroom!" Why does the bus need to stay in neutral with a special system of daily rotating PINs, rather than having the driver take their key to the bathroom with them?
The headlight switch is also the 'master on' switch for the bus, then you slap an engine starter button and off to the races you go. It's assumed you keep the bus stabled somewhere secure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GtuUBEeTVg
https://www.cleverdevices.com/products/secure-bus-access/
Clever Devices is one of the large players of the bus telematics industry and they just sit on the CANbus of the bus (heh!) and block the gear shift from being able to shift over it until you enter the PIN.
If you've ever played with a bus simulator, OMSI 2's Chicago Downtown addon requires you sign onto the bus to take it out of gear, too - you just look up and see the post-it note with that driver's ID and PIN ;)
How do drivers remember their daily PIN?
Yes, at 5pm in a major city, a bus driver might pull up next to a convenience stop, stop the bus, go pee, and come back. Does it happen often? Not that often, because of the aforementioned "we design routes so people aren't trapped for multiple hours" concept.
The only real case I could see where grabbing someone to cover you while you take a bathroom break might not work is, for example, someone working as a yard marshal... since that's not something everyone gets trained for, so the pool of replacements is smaller (including among process assistants).
So unless this worker was working the yard... there's not a lot of reason to deny them bathroom breaks... and that goes whether they're pregnant or not honestly.
Edit: Sorry to be brusque. You're suggesting that it's conscionable to disallow a bathroom break that would inconvenience customers or cause a fellow employee to be unable to progress? That category of work culture should be unheard of in the USA, but it's leaking in, and if we don't viciously reject it, we might as well start the country over.
If bathroom breaks are frequently causing some kind of unacceptable complication, then the problem isn't the bathroom break, it's the design of the position.
When I was in grade school I pissed my pants in the library because the librarian wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. We both learned a lesson that day. I learned to seek forgiveness over permission, and she learned that sometimes kids aren't bullshitting when they say they need to use the bathroom.
We are all at the mercy of the bottom quintile.