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Human resource management - the pressure of Amazon delivery targets

Geoff Riley

8th April 2021

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BBC's Newsnight looks at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on working conditions for Amazon delivery drivers.

Yes, they're still in work but they're being expected to deliver an ever greater number of parcels a day, as many as 200 drop a day. Now work that out. 20 parcels an hour, for 10 hours. That's three minutes per drop.

The article looks at the fact that their drivers are monitored to an intense degree, and this may make their working conditions unsavoury in the extreme perhaps putting the drivers themselves and the public at greater risk.

A video to consider when you are studying and discussing human resource management especially in vast companies (Amazon employs nearly a million people in the USA alone). Working conditions including wages remain a hugely important issue for companies such as Amazon with growing pressure in some countries for unions to be recognised.

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Geoff Riley

Geoff Riley FRSA has been teaching Economics for nearly forty years. He has over twenty years experience as Head of Economics at leading schools. He writes extensively and is a contributor and presenter on CPD and Revision conferences in the UK and overseas.