Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia has adopted a lot of retail practices and policies from the United States, but one thing we must never adopt is the American way in which they treat their workers. There can be no greater example of a road we should never go down than the way that the global guerrilla Amazon treats it workers. So, in the lead-up to the American retail marketing campaign of Black Friday sales, I would like to remind colleagues of the combined campaign from the TWU and the SDA to make Amazon pay. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that workers who are employed in Amazon warehouses—or 'fulfilment centres', as those at the guerrilla's head office like to call them—are under constant surveillance. They are scanned, filmed and tracked for the entire time they are there. The information gathered from this surveillance is then used to try and force the workers to work even more quickly. They are forced to increase the speed at which they walk to collect items. The number of bathroom breaks workers take are also monitored, as is the length of the break. Amazon uses different technologies to track their delivery drivers, which puts added pressure on the drivers to increase their speed and maximise the number of deliveries they complete.

Bit by bit, Amazon surveillance of their workforce is making its way into the Australian 'fulfilment centres'. While management at the guerrilla's head office might claim that all of this surveillance is in the interests of the workers' safety and productivity, we know that they have an ulterior motive. For starters, they use their surveillance cameras to spy on who workers are talking to. If a worker is caught on camera talking to a workplace delegate or a union organiser, they are singled out. If a worker is caught talking to a fellow worker and offering them comfort and support, they are singled out. This is the ugly side of the US approach to industrial relations and must not be allowed to take hold here. By continuing to rely on workers that have insecure working arrangements, Amazon seeks to make sure they have very limited obligations to their employees by denying them access to unfair dismissal arrangements and other entitlements.