Report: Amazon fired 300 Baltimore fulfillment center employees in a year over productivity

Amazon is known for its laser focus on efficiency to keep its fulfillment centers running, and the automated systems that help the company do so. This mix of metrics and machines extends to its workers as well, according to a new report.

The new report from The Verge this week details, via federal documents, how Amazon uses an automated system to track workers’ productivity in assembling orders for shipment from its fulfillment centers, and how this leads to firings for “inefficiency.”

The location of the site that’s named in the report: Baltimore. Specifically, BWI2, located on Broening Highway.

According to The Verge, 300 full-time associates were terminated in Baltimore over a year from August 2017 to September 2018.

The system was detailed in a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board, which includes documentation of a response by Amazon’s lawyers to a charge filed with the federal agency on behalf of an employee who was terminated for failing to meet productivity rates, then goes on to detail the standards and system that puts this in place.

Here’s how the report details the ecommerce company’s tracking system and measure of productivity rate:

The documents also show a deeply automated tracking and termination process. “Amazon’s system tracks the rates of each individual associate’s productivity,” according to the letter, “and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors.” (Amazon says supervisors are able to override the process.)

This includes tracking of a metric called  “time off task,” which generates alerts if employees stop scanning packages.

Amazon also provides “retraining” to workers in the bottom 5% who are not meeting the proper rate.

In general, the company said the number of terminations decreased over the last two years in Baltimore, and elsewhere.

Amazon operates a series of fulfillment centers in the region, with growth welcomed by economic development leaders. In addition to the pair of facilities on Broening Highway, a Baltimore County location recently opened at Sparrows Point. The company also has a fulfillment center in Cecil County. Combined, they employ 5,500 people.