Amazon will pay $1.9 million to settle contract workers’ human rights claims

Amazon to pay $1.9 million to more than 700 migrant workers to settle claims of human rights violations following exploitative labor contracts The affected workers worked at two of the company’s warehouses in Saudi Arabia.

Amazon saying it has hired a third-party labor rights expert to investigate conditions at the warehouse. The organization found numerous violations of Amazon’s supply chain standards, including “substandard housing, contract and wage irregularities, and delays in resolving worker complaints.”

This follows Art from last October, detailing various alleged human rights abuses by individuals employed to work at Amazon facilities in the region, and noting that many of the affected workers were “highly likely to be victims of human trafficking.” The report also suggests that Amazon was aware of the high risk of labor abuse when it operated in Saudi Arabia, but still “failed to take sufficient action to prevent such abuses.”

Concurrent reports by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism offer detailed accounts of the conditions these workers allegedly suffered, Investigations found that workers had to pay illegal recruitment fees of up to $2,040 to be hired. This forced migrant workers, many of whom were from Nepal, to take out loans at high interest rates.

Investigators also learned that these workers lived in squalid conditions, with one worker saying he lived “in a crowded room with seven other men crammed into bunk beds infested with bed bugs.” They said the water was salty and not drinkable. Amnesty International echoed these findings, saying the accommodation “lacked even the most basic amenities”.

The combination of exorbitant recruitment fees, along with associated loans, amounts to “trafficking in persons for the purpose of labor exploitation as defined by international law and standards,” Amnesty said in its report.

Amazon said it had “addressed the most serious concerns” related to the two Saudi warehouses, including upgrading the living quarters. “Our aim is for all our suppliers to have management systems in place that ensure safe and healthy working conditions; this includes responsible recruitment practices,” the company wrote.

It’s worth noting that while that $1.9 million figure seems high, it breaks down to about $2,700 per employee. Made by Amazon which works out to more than $1.5 billion every day.

Amazon doesn’t have much experience when it comes to giving birth. It is regular, especially in its. The company is also fiercely anti-union, as many of those complaints include Amazon is facing numerous ongoing federal investigations into its safety practices and has been fined by federal safety regulators for

However, the company remains recalcitrant in its efforts to strip away workers’ rights. Amazon, which claims the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is unconstitutional, joins Elon Musk’s SpaceX and grocery giant Trader Joe’s. The NLRB is an independent branch of the federal government that enforces US labor laws and has been in operation since 1935.

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