On-line retailer Amazon mentioned Friday it had paid $1.9 million to greater than 700 contract staff in Saudi Arabia in compensation for unlawful recruitment charges, amongst different alleged violations.
In October, Amnesty Worldwide accused Amazon of a sequence of abuses towards staff within the oil-rich Gulf kingdom, prompting the US-based multinational to launch an investigation.
“We’ve discovered instances the place employed staff had been charged charges, together with recruitment charges and different prices” by Saudi recruitment brokers and labor suppliers, Amazon mentioned in an announcement on its web site.
The investigation revealed different violations of firm coverage, together with “substandard housing, irregularities in contracts and wages, and delays in resolving worker complaints,” the report mentioned.
Consequently, “Amazon paid $1.9 million in compensation to greater than 700 contract staff,” the assertion mentioned.
The Amnesty report was based mostly on the tales of twenty-two males from Nepal who labored in warehouses in Riyadh or the Saudi coastal metropolis of Jeddah, relationship again to 2021, the London-based rights group mentioned.
It discovered that migrant staff working in Amazon warehouses in Saudi Arabia suffered “horrible” residing situations, office security dangers and wage theft.
Amnesty accused recruitment brokers and two Saudi labor suppliers of deceptive migrant staff who thought they might be employed immediately by Amazon and taking out massive loans to pay recruitment prices.
Labor suppliers have additionally threatened to impose steep fines on staff who need to break their contracts, successfully stranding them within the Gulf kingdom, the rights group mentioned.
Responding to Amazon’s refunds, Steve Cockburn, Amnesty’s head of financial and social justice, known as the transfer a “very important step” however mentioned extra wanted to be executed.
“The treatment also needs to be prolonged to a whole lot of different staff contracted by Amazon who’ve already left the corporate or the nation,” he mentioned in an announcement.
They “are prone to have suffered related abuses, together with dishonest, wage theft and excessive recruitment prices. They too deserve justice and compensation.”
