While some drivers said their driving time was only eight hours, more said they were likely to spend 10 hours on the road including re-deliveries and hold-ups such as traffic jams and parking.ĭrivers also have to pay costs such as insurance, van rental and maintenance, as well as parking tickets, which are often an unavoidable part of completing a job. They say “a nine hour delivery round” does not include time waiting to load vans or dealing with undelivered parcels at the end of the day. Rates of pay can differ radically around the country, as small groups of drivers are managed by small companies known as “delivery service partners”, rather than directly by Amazon.ĭrivers receive just over £14 per hour on paper, but many say they work longer than the hours they are paid. Some said shifts were being dropped or offered at very short notice, making it difficult to plan ahead. Several drivers who said while they had not seen a drop in daily pay compared with pre-“peak” levels, they were getting one or two fewer shifts each week. “As delivery drivers we are exhausted, we’ve worked tirelessly through a pandemic only to come out of the other side and receive a kick in the teeth,” the petition says.ĭrivers say rates of pay are constantly fluctuating – with one driver experiencing five different changes in day rates since September while others had had two or three adjustments in that time. More than 39,000 people have signed a petition via Organise – more than 250 of whom are Amazon workers – calling on the online retailer to review pay rates. “We’re in quite a different world now than we were last summer, and even if the salary now is the same as it was then, this is a real-terms pay cut in the face of soaring inflation and rising petrol prices, that is only likely to become more untenable in the coming months,” she said. Pavlina Draganova of campaign group Organise said that while pay was returning to the same levels as before the Christmas peak season, for many it still represented a real-terms cut. Some drivers say pay was cut back in December and others in January or February, despite a nationwide shortages of skilled workers.ĭrivers say they have been handed a pay cut equivalent to an average £20 a day from the temporary “peak” rates introduced in October despite, some say, being asked to deliver up to 60 more parcels per shift. Hourly rates are on average just over £14.60 per hour – about £2 an hour less, or 12% below, rates in October and November during the Black Friday and pre-Christmas rush. Now the winter rush is over, Amazon drivers are raising the alarm, reporting significant drops in pay and in the number of shifts being offered, while others say petrol payments have not increased to reflect soaring fuel prices. Their wages rose last year, after Covid-19 restrictions lifted and the rapid reopening of the economy led to a shortage of labour. Rather than keeping these workers on its books, it manages them through what are called delivery service providers, small companies that handle groups of drivers, who work as self-employed independent contractors with no right to holiday pay, sick pay or the “national living wage”. To deliver a service of this scale and complexity, Amazon relies on a network of thousands of drivers. They range from Prime next-day deliveries to the last mile of packages shipped from thousands of miles away in China or India. Amazon is the largest private parcel courier in the UK, delivering 15% of the estimated 5.4bn packages in 2021 – the equivalent of more than 2m items a day.
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