They don't work for Amazon. That'd be like some other company coming in to test you at your workplace instead of going through the proper chain and your boss.
But supposing they find a thief. The only thing that they can do is file a police report and sue. All the driver has to do is say "I left it on the dock to get picked up" and that's it. Word against word. Why? Because the employee signed absolutely no agreement with Amazon.
And that's the important part. The employee signed no agreement with Amazon at all. So Amazon can go smoke a big fatty and get glad.
I'm not arguing that Amazon shouldn't look into it. I'm saying that they should follow the proper channels and work with the company directly and let the company deal with it.
The companies clearly haven't been dealing with it in the first place, either because they didn't care or they could never find the evidence to prove a particular driver stole a particular lost order.
What they do when they find the drivers is up to them, and taking action through the companies is probably their best bet if they don't think they have enough evidence to sue, but they weren't going to just sit around and keep asking these delivery companies to start investigating something they really couldn't give enough of a shit about. They took matters into their own hands, and that's not a bad thing.
The companies clearly haven't been dealing with it in the first place, either because they didn't care or they could never find the evidence to prove a particular driver stole a particular lost order.
We're not told that one way or another, honestly. I'm not sure I'd assume that they're not just doing it on their own considering the bad press they're getting in regards to treatment of warehouse employees.
Do YOU want your company's clients investigating you directly instead of talking through your company? This is not how B2B works and there's a reason for it. A good company is going to protect it's own employees from abusive practices and if Amazon isn't working with the company, it's abusive. If it were my company and I found out Amazon was doing this, I'd tell Amazon to piss off and see what my lawyers said about what I can do in retaliation.
They don't work for Amazon
Not completely true. Amazon has been working on growing its own delivery services for at least 5 years now. It's still small, but I see Amazon trucks fairly often on my hour long commute in SoCal. About 20% of my packages come through their service and they do cool things like take a picture of your package when delivered, but I think they stopped doing that recently
I'm a little black and white on some things. The end question is "Who signs the employee paycheck?" The article explicitly states that these employees work for a third party. They work for a third party who signs their paychecks so they don't work for Amazon. They do Amazon's work but they are not Amazon employees. It's kind of like working for a tech recruiter at a client location. There are a number of them and if the client starts doing stuff like this, the worker/contractor does not have to tolerate it. They can walk out and the staffing company will stand up for them.
It's like Fedex. Nearly got rammed into a cement median by a truck with a Fedex logo on the trailer but the cab was brown, not Fedex white. Called in to file the complaint and was flat out told "These drivers do not work for us so there's nothing we can directly do but we're going to talk to the company that driver works for."
This is why I'm saying "Not Amazon employees" because they aren't.
Yes, I'm aware Amazon is doing its own delivery business but that's not what the article is talking about. But in that delivery business, they can do whatever the employee signs off on.
The drivers could be working for a subcontractor and that company may have language allowing it in their contract with Amazon. Amazon is investing a ton of money in their own delivery service so I'm not surprised they are doing this. They weren't satisfied with USPS, UPS, or FedEx because of damages to packages and lost shipments so they decided they wanted more control in the delivery aspect. They also have enough distribution centers that they can control more of the logistics side now but they don't have a fleet built up or aren't willing to build one so they're just using subcontractors. FedEx also uses subcontractors for small package delivery.
They weren't satisfied with USPS, UPS, or FedEx because of damages to packages and lost shipments
At least we know it's not a consumer end problem lol
Yes, but it's their (and their customers') property getting stolen. They're completely within their rights to find these people and take legal action, regardless of if they work for them or not.