Corporate employees of Amazon were asked on Monday to volunteer their time to the company’s warehouses to assist with grocery delivery as it heads into its annual discount spree known as Prime Day.
In a Slack message reviewed by the Guardian that went to thousands of white-collar workers in the New York City area from engineers to marketers, an Amazon area manager called for corporate “volunteers to help us out with Prime Day to deliver to customers on our biggest days yet”. It is not clear how many took up the offer.
Sounds like they’re getting paid but I’m really hung up on the word “volunteer”. If I’m paid my regular wage and can fit it, really not a problem.
I run a ransomware recovery department at my company. We don’t staff the department beyond us three managers. When we get an IR, we ask for volunteers in the normal staff to work for us. They get 1.5x + $25/ hour and a $50/day Uber Eats credit for working 4 hours OT.
We get a lot of volunteers.
I doubt Amazon is doing anything like that. If they don’t get enough volunteers, I could see them switching to “volunteer or else.”
Oh, absolutely not. And I’m in the Seattle area. We get good workers, but the region is saturated by people who expect Amazon level pay… So, we do what we can.