By Josh Eidelson, Bloomberg
Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest e-commerce company, is offering $1,000 prizes for delivery drivers who share stories about why they love their jobs.
Subcontracted drivers recently received messages from Amazon urging them to “tell us what drives you” for the chance to win a “My Why” competition. “This could include your journey to becoming a delivery driver, what you love about delivering smiles to customers, or how this role supports your bigger life goals,” the company said in materials viewed by Bloomberg News.
As part of the request, the company suggested answering prompts such as describing “what makes you proud to wear the uniform each day.”
The contest is for drivers employed by so-called delivery service partners, the network of small businesses that Amazon contracts with to manage hundreds of thousands of workers who bring its packages to customers. The DSP program has drawn controversy over drivers’ working conditions — and Amazon’s insistence that it’s not legally their employer.
“For years, we’ve shown appreciation to DSPs and their drivers for all the great work they do to deliver to Amazon customers,” company spokesperson Steve Kelly said in an emailed statement Thursday. “‘My Why’ is a nationwide contest meant to spotlight the drivers employed by our partners and celebrate the diverse motivations for doing this work and supporting their communities.”
One hundred contest participants will receive $1,000 cash prizes, the company has told workers. The top 10 winners will also each receive a “VIP experience” for themselves and a guest. Before making their submissions, which are due by March 28, drivers are asked to consent to having their words and image “used by Amazon in external and internal communications” and to agree to take part in “any required media activity.” Workers have the option to withdraw their consent, Amazon said.
The New York City Council is slated to hold a hearing April 9 on a bill that would require companies like Amazon to directly employ the last-mile delivery workers who bring packages to customers within the city limits. The following week in Los Angeles, a US National Labor Relations Board judge is scheduled to resume hearing testimony in an ongoing Amazon case related to DSPs. The agency alleges that the Seattle-based company was legally the boss of a group of contract drivers and needed to collectively bargain with them. Amazon has denied wrongdoing in the case.
One of the workers who received the contest message, New York City delivery driver Jerome Sloss, said he considered it a disrespectful effort to get drivers to help improve Amazon’s image. It’s also a sign of the pressure the company is feeling from challenges to the DSP model, he said.
“They’re not even acknowledging us as actual employees, but they’re offering us $1,000 to talk about why we like ‘delivering smiles,’” said Sloss, a Teamsters union activist who has rallied in support of the New York bill.
Amazon said Thursday that the contest echoes the company’s existing programming, and that it has never intended to use workers’ submissions to oppose legislation or legal proceedings.
“The winners of the ‘My Why’ contest will be decided by DSPs through an anonymized process and the idea that programming like ‘My Why’ is motivated by external factors is just false,” the company said.
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