Amazon apologizes for denying that its drivers pee in bottles

Amazon apologized for disputing a lawmaker's claim that its workers urinate in bottles, admitting in a Friday blog post that it was "incorrect" to deny the report. The online retailer said the issue affects drivers, not employees in its many warehouses across the U.S.

Questions about whether Amazon workers operating under severe time constraints sometimes resort to urinating in bottles surfaced in a 2018 book by British journalist James Bloodworth, who went undercover to briefly work at an Amazon warehouse in documenting the hardship of low-wage work in the U.K. In his account, he came across what appeared like a bottle of urine hidden on a warehouse shelf, which he assumed was one worker's solution to the difficulty of squeezing in bathroom breaks at the massive facility.  Until its apology, Amazon had refuted such accounts entirely. "You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us," the company's Amazon News account tweeted on March 24 in response to criticism from Rep. Mark Pocan that the online behemoth wasn't enlightened in its workplace practices just because it offered a minimum wage of $15 an hour.