On Wednesday (December 6), the District of Columbia in the US announced that it was suing e-commerce behemoth Amazon for allegedly taking gratuities from Flex service delivery drivers in order to increase revenues and save expenses. According to the case, Amazon was using misleading business methods in violation of local legislation.
Karl Racine, the attorney general of the local Washington, DC government, said in the lawsuit that ‘when a firm is detected stealing from its workers, the company’s repayment of the sum taken is not adequate. Stealing from employees is theft, and severe punishments are required to effectively deter this illegal behaviour’.
Amazon.com and Amazon Logistics are the targets of the case. It claims that between the end of 2016 and the middle of 2019, Amazon deceived customers into believing that tip money was going to Flex service drivers when, in fact, it was being utilised to cut operational expenses. Racine stated in a release that ‘Amazon, one of the richest firms in the world, clearly does not need to collect tips that belong to workers’.
Amazon can and ought to improve;
In 2015, Amazon introduced Flex, giving delivery personnel the chance to use their own vehicles to transport goods for the firm and earn between $18 and $25 per hour, plus tips. ‘Customer trust is of utmost importance to Amazon,’ according to spokesperson Maria Boschetti in answer to a query from AFP. All of the customer tips at issue were previously given to drivers as part of a settlement last year with the FTC, so this case, which concerns a procedure we modified three years ago, is without substance.
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