Featured Image Credit: Taylor Hill/Contributor/Nathan Stirk/Contributor
Topics: Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Money
Lucy Devine
Topics: Amazon, Jeff Bezos, Money
An Amazon warehouse employee was left stunned by Jeff Bezos' response when she desperately emailed him about her pay.
Tara Jones, who worked in an Amazon warehouse in Oklahoma, sent an email to the founder back in 2020 after she discovered she found she had been underpaid.
Tara was missing $90 of the $540 she was owed while she had been on medical leave.
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The issue kept on happening, however, even after she reported it. Tara was so frustrated that she ended up emailing Amazon founder Bezos, telling him she was in tears.
In the email, as seen by the New York Times, Tara wrote: “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up. I’m crying as I write this email.”
Tara had no idea at the time, but she'd actually set off a chain of events which would impact other employees, too.
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The email triggered an investigation after it emerged that Tara wasn't the only member of staff who had been impacted by the issue.
According to the NY Times, employees were underpaid at 179 warehouses for around 18 months, with workers struggling to pay their bills as a result.
One worker said they had to have their car repossessed while others claimed they were fired after software reported their medical leave as absences.
Meanwhile, it's reported that doctors' notes were 'vanishing' in the system.
In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told The Independent: “We’re disappointed when any of our employees experience an issue with their leave.
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"The New York Times article suggested these issues are widespread and ongoing. They are not.
"We went back and audited the period in question to make sure employees received their pay, and to our knowledge, there are no outstanding issues.
“The controls we’ve implemented over the last 18 months have resulted in less than 1 percent of people experiencing an issue while being on paid leave.
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"Certainly, the unprecedented nature of Covid did put a strain on our system’s ability to keep pace with demand and we’ve been hard at work investing and inventing to do better every day.”
Globally, Amazon employs 1,541,000 people - according to stats from last year - with warehouses and offices all over the world.
Since the issues, Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy, who took over from Bezos in July 2021, has pledged to improve the company's leave system, in the hopes that they can become 'Earth's best employer'.