Amazon is reinstating a pre-pandemic coverage bringing again steel detector screenings for its 750,000 U.S.-based hourly warehouse workers, per a brand new Bloomberg report. The retail big may also require staff to register their telephones so safety personnel know they have not stolen the units.
Amazon reportedly started telling staff in choose check areas concerning the cellphone registration and steel detector screenings on Monday. The corporate is planning to progressively roll out the anti-theft measures, beginning first with check warehouses after which increasing to all of its U.S. amenities, per Bloomberg.
Beneath the brand new coverage, workers must stroll by way of a steel detector to depart Amazon warehouses to make sure that they have not taken something with them. Cellphone registration entails sharing the final six digits of the cellphone’s serial quantity in trade for an figuring out sticker.
Associated: ‘Tough Resolution’: Amazon Publicizes a New Spherical of Layoffs. Right here Are the Roles Affected.
“We’re all the time working to make our amenities extra protected and safe for our workers and for all firms of all sizes that put their belief in us to retailer their stock,” an Amazon spokesperson informed Bloomberg in an emailed assertion.
Steel detector screenings aren’t new at Amazon warehouses — they have been the norm earlier than the pandemic. However they have been controversial, and staff filed lawsuits over the screenings in 2014, looking for greater than $100 million in again wages for time spent in line ready to be screened. They alleged that they stood in line for as much as 25 minutes at a time to conform.
Inside an Amazon success heart in Robbinsville, New Jersey. Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg through Getty Pictures
That very same 12 months, the U.S. Supreme Court docket had the ultimate say on the matter and dominated that staff weren’t entitled to again pay for time misplaced after a shift to steel detector screenings.
Amazon additionally stopped workers from accessing their telephones earlier than the pandemic, mandating that they go away private units in automobiles or lockers. The retail big relaxed this coverage in the course of the pandemic as staff sought to be related to real-time medical data, per Bloomberg.
Associated: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Says the ‘Option to Get Forward’ at Amazon Is not By Overseeing a ‘Large Crew and Fiefdom’
In keeping with Enterprise Insider, Amazon operates 110 warehouses within the U.S. with some as giant as one million sq. ft.
Statista estimates that Amazon is the second-largest firm on this planet after Walmart, with 1.5 million international workers as of 2023.
