ABC News

As workers walk into an enormous, nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of Melbourne, they pass a sign reading “Amazon fulfillment”.

Inside, they’re met with a wall of haphazardly arranged slogans, mottos they’re expected to live by here: Customer Obsession. Think Big. Earn Trust.

Then they front security and a metal detector. Staff need to make sure they have no electronic devices with them and they can’t wear anything sold by Amazon Australia. Anti-theft measures.

On the warehouse floor, there are aisles of shelves as far as the eye can see, all stacked with a seemingly random assortment of goods.

This is an official Amazon video showing operations inside its first Australian warehouse, on the outskirts of Melbourne. It shows an orderly environment, where staff move calmly around the aisles, collecting customers’ orders.

But workers say this doesn’t represent what really goes on inside the ‘fulfillment centre’.

Instead, workers have told ABC News:

the workplace is built around a culture of fear where their performance is timed to the second;

they are expected to constantly work at ‘Amazon pace’, described as somewhere between walking and jogging;

high-pressure targets make them feel like they can’t go to the toilet and sometimes push them to cut safety corners;

they can be sent home early without being paid for the rest of their shift when orders are completed; and

everyone is employed as a casual and constantly anxious about whether they’ll get another shift.

It’s been just over a year since Amazon opened in Australia. The global giant recently became the biggest company in the world based on total stock market value (albeit briefly) and its founder Jeff Bezos is listed as the richest person on the planet.

ABC News has spoken to eight current and former employees of Amazon’s first warehouse in Australia.

They spoke to us on condition of anonymity, for fear they would lose their shifts with Amazon or their new employers.

“I feel dehumanised,” says Amazonian 1.

“I feel like they resent the fact that I’m not a robot and that I’m made of flesh and bone.”

Organisational psychologist Heather Ikin calls Amazon’s practices a form of “abusive supervision” that create a constant sense of anxiety among staff.

An Amazon Australia spokeswoman told the ABC these claims did not represent the Amazon she knew.

This week, she took me on a tour of the warehouse. The invitation came more than three months after my initial request to see inside and speak to workers. Amazon initially “didn’t feel comfortable” with any media coming inside, their public relations agent said.

But that changed after I sent Amazon a detailed series of questions about workers’ claims. Now, Amazon Australia were sorry the ABC had not felt welcomed.

“Let’s start again,” the spokeswoman requested. “How can I help you?”

I was offered the warehouse tour — but with no cameras, no on-the-record interview, and no conversations with staff without a manager present.

Leave everything in the car except pen and paper, I was told.

The warehouse is certainly an impressive and high-tech operation, as you would expect. But the tour did not answer our questions about working conditions.

“We strive to be a great employer in Australia and we believe we are making good progress but still have lots more to do,” the company noted in its written response to the ABC’s questions.

Teams huddle together on the warehouse floor at the start of their shift.

“I say Amazon, you say ‘efficiency’,” a supervisor chants.

“Amazon!”

“Efficiency.”

The supervisor asks someone to lead the daily team stretches. The workers are asked to share an Amazon ‘success story’. This is all designed to gear ‘Amazonians’ up for the high-pressure day ahead.

‘Work hard. Have fun. Make history.’ The company’s motto is woven into a huge rainbow-coloured mural at the front of the warehouse.

Employees here — responsible for storing, picking, and packing tens of thousands of items each day — are a small cog in the huge machine behind Amazon’s vision to be an everything store for anyone, anywhere.

Some say their work is robotic and others compare their days to a dystopian video game.

“They would drill ideology into you every day. They’d try and brainwash you into becoming the star player of Amazon,” Amazonian 2 says.

At first, many of the Amazon ‘associates’ we spoke to were excited to be a part of something big. But the novelty wore off quickly.

Amazonian 1 works as a picker, one of the highest-pressure jobs on the warehouse floor, where algorithms determine how many items should be moved, stored, packed and picked within the hour.

The technology prioritises Amazon’s same-day deliveries.

At the start of his shift he collects a hand-held scanner ‘gun’ and trolley. His role involves collecting items from the warehouse shelves to make up people’s online orders.

Other teams stock the shelves and pack Amazon’s trademark ‘smiling’ boxes ready for shipping.

“Your job is carved up to tiny tasks which means they can replace you easily and training is very efficient,” Amazonian 1 says.

Once he collects and scans a product, a new item automatically appears on his scanner, along with a timer counting down how long he has left to find and scan the next item.

“The item might be six aisles away and you have 15 seconds,” he says. “Technology gets it wrong. You’re paranoid, you don’t know if the manager knows that’s unreasonable.

“The timer disappears if you don’t make it, just to put the fear of god into you. You internalise that little clock...

“You walk at ‘Amazon pace’, which is just shy of jogging.

“They expect that of you, that’s made very clear. Everything we do here is really fast.”

On the day of my tour, about 130 staff are rostered across the warehouse floor. The sound of a bike bell dings before a trolley comes zipping around the corner of an aisle.

“Safety first,” my guide says.

After we pass another 20 or so aisles, a packing supervisor tells us her understanding of ‘Amazon pace’ is working as quickly as what’s needed to “get customer orders out on time”.

But there is “no pressure”, she adds. “I love working here. That’s the truth. The support is amazing. I’m always supported by management.”

Management, of course, are right there alongside us.

Each worker’s performance is calculated into ‘pick rates’. Amazonian 1 says that if you’re collecting ‘small items’ from the shelves, you’re expected to collect about 120 products an hour — two items every minute. The employees say they’re left physically and mentally exhausted at the end of each shift.

If staff don’t meet their rates, they say a supervisor will approach them and ask if something is wrong.

“A representative came to me and said, ‘your numbers are low, what happened?’,” Amazonian 3 says. “I said I was lifting large items, 15 or 20 kilograms. But when they come to us it makes me feel like we’re not working hard enough.”

“It’s hard, I can’t make the times in the scanner,” Amazonian 4 says. “It’s really fast. I get stressed. They [are] always looking for your rates. It’s about numbers at Amazon.”

Workers say it’s never explicitly said, but everyone understands that poor pick rates result in fewer shifts.

“I was privy to conversations with management and a casual PA (processing assistant) and there was a lot of ‘Can we help them?’ We had people in their 60s. If they can’t help them, the next day they were sacked immediately, they wouldn’t get a text with their hours. Just, your shift’s been cancelled,” Amazonian 6 says.

Amazon denies its targets are unreasonable.

“Some of our roles are physically demanding jobs and this fact is made clear when associates join, so they understand the process and requirements,” it wrote.

“As with nearly all companies, we expect a certain level of performance from our associates and we continue to set reasonable productivity targets objectively, based on previous performance levels achieved by our workforce.”

Like many of his co-workers, Amazonian 7 is a recent migrant to Australia. He thought working for such a huge company would look good on his resume but in reality he’s never sure if he’s going to be able to pay his rent.

One week he was getting five shifts and the next week he got none. In the meantime, he says, new staff were starting on the warehouse floor.

“I was getting $550 for a week. Then all of a sudden ... no shifts.”

The warehouse is located in Dandenong South, an industrial area next to one of Melbourne’s most disadvantaged suburbs. Many of the staff we spoke to say people working there are often living pay packet to pay packet.

All of the on-ground warehouse staff the ABC spoke to were employed as casuals through one of the country’s biggest labour hire agencies, Adecco.

National Union of Workers national secretary Tim Kennedy says the level of casualisation in Amazon’s warehouse is “unheard of” in Australia.

“In a lot of the facilities where we represent workers, up to 40 per cent of the workers will be casual or labour hire, but nowhere have we ever found in Australia that a major company running its logistics supply chain uses 100 per cent labour hire casuals not employed by them directly.

“It allows Amazon to have no legal obligation to workers in regards to unfair dismissal or any sense of job security.”