Massive turnover rates. Dissatisfaction with pay. Demanding bosses. Some workers who helped Amazon take advantage of the business opportunity the pandemic brought say they aren’t pleased.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns left many Americans fearful or unable to shop at physical stores. So they turned to online shopping. Amazon purchases ballooned in 2020 — it delivered 2.3 billion more of its own packages in 2020 compared to 2019, according to data from MWPVL International, a logistics business. Amazon’s revenue grew last year by 38%. Seven months into the pandemic, CEO Jeff Bezos’s net worth surpassed $200 billion.
Amazon relied on technically independent businesses, who often rent vans owned by Amazon and are paid for the routes they complete by Amazon. These businesses, called “delivery service partners,” or DSPs for short, have 20-40 Amazon vans and up to 100 employees, according to Amazon. The DSP program has expanded to 10 countries, creating 158,000 jobs at 2,500 DSPs, according to Amazon.