Amazon’s UK profits rose 51% to almost £20billion in the pandemic, but agency workers brought in to deal with the demand say it was earned on the back of “slave labour”.
They were left struggling on effectively zero-hour contracts, with shifts dropped at the last minute and wages left unpaid. Amazon used 25,000 seasonal workers in 2020, but the Mirror’s investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and ITV News found it broke its own pledges on zero-hour contracts.
It claims not to use zero-hour contracts and that all its warehouse workers, including those employed through agencies, should be paid for at least 20 hours’ work a week, “even when 20 hours of work is not available”.