Amazon Workers are About to Be Put to the Test

News of the FedEx Ground and Amazon breakup rippled through the shipping community last week. Now, the breakup has many people wondering about how a select group of people will be affected: Amazon workers. The truth is, Amazon workers are bound to be stretched thin…and this is only the beginning. As Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) pulls more package volume away from carrier partners and takes on more deliveries within its own network, the company’s delivery employees will have to shoulder the burden.

Amazon Workers Already Faced Grueling Conditions

Even before FedEx (NYSE:FDX) pulled all their domestic services from the company, Amazon workers already faced grueling working conditions. In a profile on Business Insider, some workers described abuses such as lack of overtime pay, intimidating, missing wages, and more. In order to meet delivery timeframes, workers also reported feeling pressured to drive at dangerously high speeds, ignore stop signs, and even urinate in bottles on their trucks.

Amazon’s Biggest Shipper is Now…Well, Amazon

As of January 2019, Amazon is now its own biggest shipper. Around that time, the company officially took on the majority percentage of total package volume in their network, surpassing USPS. The trend here should come as no surprise. Amazon is moving towards utilizing their own delivery network for all of their package volume. That means the company will eventually sidestep other carrier partners such as USPS and UPS altogether. Therefore, it’s hard to say what kind of conditions and pressures Amazon workers will face in the future when no other carriers will be there to help. If the recent breakup with FedEx is any indication, it seems we’re all about to find out.