This Rings a Bell

Amazon delivery.

Amazon delivery drivers admitted breaking speed limits and said they did not always have time for toilet breaks because of the pressure to stay on schedule, according to a BBC investigation.

Drivers for companies contracted to work for the online retailer told an undercover reporter that they were expected to deliver up to 200 parcels a day.

The report also claimed some drivers said they were effectively paid less than the minimum wage of £7.20, because of the long hours worked to deliver all their assigned parcels.

This is not peculiar to Amazon. When I came back from France, I worked briefly (very briefly – I lasted two days) temping as a multi-drop delivery driver for one of these courier firms. It was obvious from the workload that the days work would not fit in a day. The vans were dodgy – mine had a very iffy tyre and they didn’t like it when I complained. And they had this dreadful satnav system that didn’t know the roads properly, so routed you down streets that were dead ends. We were allowed two minutes per drop. Yeah, right… No allowance for traffic, piss-poor directions from the satnav or people not being at home, taking longer than the allotted two minutes to get to the door and so on.

I went back to the agency and made these points. I promptly lost my job. They really don’t like people complaining. Their answer to my comment about the long hours was to tell me that I would get paid the extra time, so that’s good. Any point about driver fatigue went straight over their heads. As my driving licence – not to mention my life and those of other road users – was more important to me than the extra few bob I would earn by driving into the night in order to finish the work, I was happy to let it go. Nothing would ever persuade me back into this type of work and this news story merely confirms that this appalling practice and incompetence is still rife.