Drudge slams Post over Amazon warehouses

Matt Drudge slammed The Washington Post on Monday, criticizing it for not reporting about a story describing difficult working conditions at Amazon warehouses.

Drudge accused the Post of avoiding the issue because it is owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

“Washington Post silent on AMAZON warehouse conditions? Of course! ‘Journalism’ ends at owner’s paycheck…” the Drudge Report founder wrote, linking to a piece in the British tabloid The Mirror.

Washington Post silent on AMAZON warehouse conditions? Of course! ‘Journalism’ ends at owner’s paycheck… https://t.co/vEeZHbOGNU pic.twitter.com/SZgCsQT1U8

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) November 27, 2017

{mosads}The Mirror piece, published Saturday, was written by a reporter who said he had been hired to work at an Amazon warehouse in Tilbury, England. The reporter brought a camera to the warehouse during the five weeks he spent as a worker there, and wrote of brutal working conditions that included workers falling asleep at their stations and ambulances arriving to help others.

“Timed toilet breaks, impossible targets and workers falling asleep on feet: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse,” reads the Mirror headline.

Some Amazon workers in Italy and Germany went on strike on Black Friday to protest for higher pay.

The strikes were covered by the Post, but it did not appear to have aggregated a news story about the article published by The Mirror.

This marks the second time in two weeks that Drudge, a powerful voice in the conservative world, has gone after The Washington Post.

On Nov. 13, he criticized the Post after it slammed him for regularly linking to “Russia propaganda” during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I’ve linked to @washingtonpost over 10,000X in 25 years of doing DRUDGEREPORT,” Drudge wrote on Twitter at the time.

“I currently give them 37% of their referral traffic, according to http://similarweb.com. It’s a brutal business. Not even a thank you. Instead: YOU’RE A RUSSIAN OPERATIVE!” he wrote.

Drudge, who hadn’t featured a photo of himself on his Twitter account, also changed his profile picture to one of him reading The Washington Times while sitting on a park bench.

Drudge often deletes his tweets 24 hours after posting them.

UPDATE: A spokesman for Amazon responded to questions from The Hill after this story was posted. The spokesman said Amazon provides a safe workplace and competitive pay, and that employees may ask for exceptions from working overtime.

“Amazon provides a safe and positive workplace with competitive pay and benefits from day one. We are proud to have been able to create thousands of new permanent roles in our UK fulfilment centres in recent years. One of the reasons we’ve been able to attract so many people to join us is that we offer great jobs and a positive work environment with opportunities for growth.

“As with nearly all companies, we expect a certain level of performance from our associates. Productivity targets are set objectively, based on previous performance levels achieved by our workforce. Associate performance is measured and evaluated over a long period of time as we know that a variety of things could impact the ability to meet expectations in any given day or hour. We support people who are not performing to the levels expected with dedicated coaching to help them improve.

“Even with careful planning, as an organisation that has seasonal fluctuations of customer demand, overtime is sometimes required and when this happens associates are paid a premium. We also have an exception process so that associates can alert us to times when they just cannot do overtime for valid personal reasons. The vast majority of exception requests in Tilbury had been accepted.”

The spokesman also offered a statement on the strikes in Italy and Germany.

“The vast majority of our employees in Italy and Germany came to work and remained focused on delivering the best customer experience. We are proud of our record of job creation and are confident we will deliver for our customers across the globe this holiday season.” 

This story was updated at 9:32 a.m.