Amazon India workers say they're overworked and mistreated during a brutal heat wave

MANESAR, India — Between April and June, a deadly heat wave struck large swaths of northern India. Birds dropped dead from the sky. Demand for electricity skyrocketed. Forest fires raged in the Himalayas.

And at an Amazon facility on the outskirts of the capital New Delhi, in the dusty industrial town of Manesar, Rajesh Singh remembers his colleagues at the loading dock fainting around him.

“It happened so frequently, I thought there was a virus doing rounds,” Singh says.

Singh, 24, and a handful of his colleagues met NPR reporters at a roadside café in mid-June, giving up the chance to make a day’s overtime pay of the equivalent of around $14. It beefs up his earnings that come to around $120 a month. The pay might be decent in a village or provincial town, but it's low for these parts around Delhi.

Singh says he largely likes his job, its flexible hours and his colleagues. That's echoed by the dozen other people NPR spoke to. Most of them handle storing, packaging and shipping work in Amazon warehouses based in the outskirts of New Delhi and Mumbai.

But Singh and his colleagues say they were speaking out because they want Amazon to treat workers better.

In a statement sent by email, Amazon says the company complies with Indian law, and there’s “nothing more important than the safety and wellbeing of the workers." The statement adds that Amazon keeps all their facilities cool, managers can temporarily suspend work if it gets too hot, and Amazon “ensures additional breaks when temperatures are high.” Amazon says it curtails deliveries during the hottest parts of the day during the heat wave.

Singh and his colleagues say this never happened, even during the worst spells of the heat wave. “We had to work from the minute we sign in to the minute we stop for a break,” says Neha, another worker at the Amazon facility in Manesar.

Workers are entitled to two 30-minute breaks during their eight-hour shift. The rest of the time, says Neha, managers expect them to power through the day — calling it a “fast start” and a “strong finish” — even if a worker feels any discomfort or illness.

Neha wants to only use her first name, fearing retaliation from her managers. Most other Amazon workers NPR spoke to requested similar anonymity.

They told NPR that the busiest periods are while processing orders for subscribers of Amazon’s same-day delivery service. Neha says that’s when their bosses pressure them not to use toilets or take a water break.

In June, India’s semi-governmental National Human Rights Commission sent a notice to the company after the Indian Express newspaper reported that workers at an Amazon warehouse were made to pledge not to take toilet or water breaks until they’d met their targets for the day. In Amazon’s emailed statement to NPR, it called this an “isolated incident of poor judgment” and said it had taken disciplinary action against the person responsible.

Senior Amazon India management, who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they were not speaking as individuals, but to represent the company, told NPR that workers can use a restroom whenever they need to. They said they had not received any complaints surrounding workers being pressured to not use the toilet, despite having what they say is a robust and anonymized complaints system.

In its emailed statement to NPR, Amazon said, “We have multiple toilets and washrooms at our facilities that employees and associates can use whenever they need.”

And yet nearly every Amazon worker who spoke to NPR said they were pressured not to use the toilet during the busiest periods of the day.

That is also true hundreds of miles away, on the outskirts of the port city of Mumbai. There, a 25-year-old worker at an Amazon facility in Bhiwandi town recalls his manager berating him for taking a toilet break without permission. The worker, who requested anonymity to speak freely, says his manager accused him of wasting time — or having an undeclared medical problem. When he argued with his manager, he says, he got a formal warning for misbehavior.

To avoid confrontations such as this, another Amazon worker, 31, says he avoids drinking water on the job. He also takes medication for back pain, chest pain and blood pressure, which he says is up. He blames this on not getting to rest enough on the job. He says he’s lost more than 30 pounds since he began working at Amazon four years ago, “and I’ve been taking medicine every day.”

Amazon workers who spoke to NPR joke that the toilets do have one function in their workplace — as a break room. Like when Rajesh Singh, from the Amazon facility on the outskirts of New Delhi, says he hurt his finger in a conveyor belt. He tells NPR that a human resources officer told him to just use his other hand. Singh says he made a fuss, and was finally told to take a break in the restroom.

In their statement, Amazon senior management did not respond to NPR’s questions about the specific workplace injuries NPR described to them. The workers NPR spoke to say they don't feel safe airing these complaints formally, particularly about workplace injuries. They're afraid they'll be or denied overtime by their direct managers — or fired.

“Some bosses tell us to quit if we can’t take it,” says the 25-year-old man who works in the Amazon facility on the outskirts of Mumbai. “That there are hundreds willing to take our place.”

In August, Amazon’s India management invited NPR to tour the company's busiest facility in India on the outskirts of New Delhi. It's a three-story warehouse spread over acres. During the escorted tour, NPR saw employees working with their heads down, rapidly picking products off shelves, sorting them into orders, packing them into boxes and slapping addresses on them. There was a cafeteria with meals at affordable prices.

There were three workers in a first aid room that was clean and bright. Amazon tells NPR that their medical facilities go beyond what’s required by Indian law.

After the tour, Amazon management answered questions by NPR reporters. They mostly echoed the emailed statement, but one senior official added he believed the claims that workers made to NPR were false — and politically motivated.

The official didn’t clarify what he meant but alluded to a recent report by a global union that alleged mistreatment in Amazon facilities. The report by the UNI Global Union organization in Switzerland last year detailed problems facing Amazon workers around the world, like being underpaid and having to urinate inside bottles to meet productivity targets.

Indian employees who spoke with NPR said they weren't aware of that report. But some did say they were inspired by workers in Staten Island, N.Y., who made history in 2022 as the first, and so far only, unionized Amazon warehouse.

The Indian workers are supported by lawyer Dharmendra Kumar, a labor rights activist. He helped found the Amazon India Workers Association. Kumar says even though Amazon isn't the biggest e-commerce platform in India, it's the global standard bearer. “Amazon is the leader here,” he says. “If the leader changes, others will follow.”

Kumar says the stakes are high: The country’s e-commerce market will only get bigger, and he wants workers to be treated better from the beginning.

After similar reports in local media in June, India’s National Human Rights Commission asked the Labor Ministry to investigate Amazon worker complaints. Amit Basole, professor of economics at India’s Azim Premji University, says he’s doubtful much will happen, because the government’s priority is to create jobs for the country’s enormous young, underemployed population.

"[Labor rights] protection is important but the first thing is to create enough jobs,” he says.

Back in the roadside cafe, Rajesh Singh says workers at Amazon in India deserve better.

“Do you know what happens when you click to order a mobile phone off Amazon?” he asks. “How many people might fall sick in fulfilling your order? What abuse will they be exposed to? How many workers get blacklisted during that process?”

He says, “You don’t know. You just order.”

Editor’s note: Amazon is among NPR's financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content. NPR covers the company independently.