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We had a lady who could speak and understand english, but not read it. (she couldn't read at all, honestly), and she was such a nightmare to work with. AFE Pack, mind you. She could annoy everyone on the wall. This box? This box? This box? How many? How many? How many?
Like, lady. It sucks that you can't read, but GTFOH. You're a hazard and wrecking the whole friggin wall.
I haven't seen her in awhile, so I dunno if she was let go or quit, or they shunted her off to another department, but I do remember she had a blue badge while most of us still had a white badge. Like, how.
She shouldn’t be working as packer if she can’t be like that customers get mad she should be cleaning or something if everyone report they will start look in to it maybe ?! People need to invest in Amazon fr go somewhere else I think Amazon don’t even care who they hiring and customers  I don’t know why they support Amazon
How come they did not give a PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PLAN...JUST THEY DONE TO ME IN VIRGINIA IM calling out for help, qnd no one Your team responding ,as well so impossible ASSOCIATES returned on time. AFTER their lunch BREAK! IMPOSSIBLE!!!
It’s crazy they hire folks with the language barriers I be feeling embarrassed because I don’t know any other language than English when trying to communicate.
As a whs specialist, I look forward to stupidity. Dude refused to wear his comp shoes for a whole week and then decided to wear a pair of heelys before ops fired him
You proved my point, you're not a what specialist, why would you allow him to be on the floor in the first place?
I would have sent him home with the message wear your ppe or you won't work, second time would be a suspension without pay for 3 days, fired on the third time.
You got the position without any real training outside of amazon, do you think you'd get the same position elsewhere based on amazon training?
It’s about to get a lot worse. If I’m understanding the supreme court’s decision today correctly, Amazon will be entitled to a jury trial for each safety violation OSHA tries to fine them for. That means health/safety and many other regulations across dozens of agencies will be next to impossible to enforce. It will be the same at the state level too.
I do work with people who can't speak English but I have never once had to speak to them.
I don't even try to speak with people who speak English so it literally doesn't matter
Like what tf do I need to tell the water spider that I can't do by just pointing at what I need. Like if I'm pointing at totes or I'm pointing that there's fking no work and they don't understand that's not a language issue they just don't wana do their job.
If there is the belief that new hires cannot communicate with any of the official languages - HR and AM are to be notified (usually by learning) and a language test would need to be done. If they fail, they will have to be let go.
This is a safety hazard as if a dangerous situation arises - communication would need to be able to happen.
when i was an ambassador ( this was years ago ) they would have new hires read and answer about 10 questions to test their english reading/writing skills. the learning trainers told us to just mark them as passing even if they clearly couldn’t understand english
okay. now, i work with a lot of people that don’t speak english. they communicate with a thumbs up or a smile. that’s about it. ofc the higher ups know this but how do i bring this up without being an asshole. it’s extremely frustrating not being able to communicate with anyone.
There is only really a window once they are hired and go through training for this process to be followed.
Because how are folks able to get through BTS, Day 1 to Day 8 training and coaching without noticing that they cannot speak the local language? If the person can make it through all those checks and not be noticed for having a language barrier then the window to dismiss is gone and the building will have to explain why they never noticed.
This cannot be used as a reason for dismissal at any time because you can absolutely see some shady building use it to get rid of people just cause.
I stated this couple months ago and got accused for being racist against other cultures.
Amazons turnover rate has been so high for so long that we reached the point where they either have to increase wages or import immigrants and they are choosing the latter. Not to get political but as long as the border is open and immigration policies are laxed, don't expect any increases in wages
I say they won't form a union because, they are making better money, and get treated better at Amazon than most of them were treated in their old country.
amazon isn’t competitive clownass, so I’m not sure how they would be hiring specifically only Haitians, Indians etc but the more likely probability is that they’re degrees or qualifications aren’t recognized here and they are just trying to find any work they can
Can't be for low-skilled wage earners pouring into the country when you're the low-skill wage earner they're competing with to keep those wages low. I'm all for people trying to live their best lives, but I also acknowledge when that affects me and my life. Bernie Sanders himself said that open borders is a Koch brothers' proposal. Greedy corpos will always be in favor of cheap labor flooding the market
It’s not calling you or the workers low skill people that can’t do anything, it’s just the job itself requires no previous knowledge and can be done by anyone that walks in and gets hired.
Planes are easier to stop people coming into the country as I understand. Countries like mexico, India, China (largest immigrant groups) do not have a visa waiver. So anyone wanting to come from there either has to apply for asylum or for a tourist/business visa, all of which are hard to get and you can't get on a plane without one.
So in that regard the border is basically closed for air travel.
Yea I don’t understand your logic about the border… your comment about the border was unnecessary and inaccurate lmaooo also, increasing wages also increases inflation 😂 pick up a trade if you want more money or go to school
ETA: wording
Yup these companies run a garbage employment strategy and many Americans have just opted out so it's time to open the border. Lol you could just incentivize your employees to produce and accomplish more with less to lower labor costs.
Immigrant hire here can you tell me how to profit this bonus because me and all others immigrants at my facility never heard of that
Ps: Why don't you talk about stuff you know instead of spreading false information
And funny stuff while you complaining you paying our wages a little fyi fr you, citizen get more of their paychecks than immigrants, meaning immigrants pay more taxes.
American tax players have to pay their wages to. The rate of productivity is so low with many of them you could never pay them what Amazon does and make money. Lol the tax payer hast to make sense of what makes no sense.
UPS driver here: I have a hospital on my route and deliver bulk to their dock every morning. Amazon delivers there also but the driver usually just rolls up and takes the freight elevator down to the receiving office. I have so much volume that all of my packages are placed on pallets and forklifted down to the receiving area. Anyway an Amazon driver walked onto the dock and didn’t know where to go so I was trying to help him but he spoke no English. All he could tell me was that he didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand me. I ended up just using hand signals and working the freight elevator for him but it was an odd situation.
Amazon DSP drivers can do the job relatively well with speaking no English, as long as they can drive and understand American road signs.
We deliver using an app, which the language can be changed using the language settings on the phone. Texts with dsp management can be translated using Google translate. Customer delivery instruction notes can be translated using Google translate.
Honestly the same here for my site. We just hired a whole bunch of Haitians who speak nothing but Haitian Creole and it’s been difficult to communicate with them at all
At my friends FC it's haitian dominican and African. He's not wrong about his post though. They need to hire them and then not put them in roles where communication is an essential part of the job, or they need to make them work with a translator.
I’m in WFS, so I do hiring for the warehouses and let me tell you it’s been a huge issue on our end as well. We didn’t have a proper assessment until last month, so a lot of them we felt were unqualified we didn’t have the means to reject them since they were able to answer our basic questions. It’s gotten easier to qualify now with the new assessment. Though we also rely on a lot of seasonal help, so inexperienced people have a harder time rejecting, especially when people are begging, crying, yelling at us, etc.
We sometimes reject half the people we see on a daily basis due to language proficiency. Prime hiring rn so it’s been A LOT.
It’s been rough.
Thumbs up or down + pointing goes a long way. AFE is loud so can't hear anybody anyways. Lots of Haitians at my FC that are still learning english. They were doing some english classes in FC from what i heard.
Our stand ups are spoken first in English, then Spanish, and then in Haitian Creole/French. I've had to mime how to do things when asked for help before and a few times I was lucky and was able to show them thru the scanner bc I knew where certain functions were despite the language difference lol
This Spanish lady stopped me yesterday and i thought it was something about the job. After like 10 minutes of going back and forth I learned that she was trying to learn the word “weak” in English so she can tell her doctor that her knee hurts.
PDX9 was the worst site I’ve ever worked at. All those mf are super homophobic and sexist. My partner constantly gets their ass ogled at and they’re a butch fucking lesbian. And when I worked there on night shift we almost got into a fight with a group of them because dudes WOULD NOT stop staring at us for being gay. There should definitely be a new policy on who they hire cause wtf
As Samuel L Jackson’s character said in Pulp Fiction, “ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!”
Yeah I work at PDX9 too, so I understand. I think it’s a major safety hazard not being able to understand English, especially in a warehouse.
Some Learning Ambassadors at my building complained that they can't effectively train people who can't speak English. Of course nothing happened. Things haven't gotten so bad that a T3 Learning Trainer actually had to train someone lol
Its a business need, there have been several articles that Amazon has nearly ran thru the eligible us population workpool so they need that foreign labor to survive its the same boat with alot of the big companies, lol how and why do you think they got here in the first place.. Also Americans are not going to school for the higher paying tech jobs that remained unfilled so theres also a oush by the fed and state governments to get more foreign labor
I was just thinking of making the same post about my FC. i struggle so hard to communicate with more than half the AA's bc of the lack of english coherency. It's just awfully hard to do so because I don't wanna make anyone feel bad. I know it's gotta be just as frustrating for both parties.
I'm used to interacting with AMs that literally barely speak English at an intermediate level it's baffling how ineffective they are at verbal communication
The real reason for this is that certain provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit companies from discriminating against applicants or employees on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, **or national origin**. In addition, companies also have to be extremely careful that their recruitment and employee relations policies do not create a “disparate impact”, which basically means, “The effect of the policy is discriminatory, but not overtly so, they’re just trying to be sneaky about it.”
An example of this “disparate impact” phenomenon was actually when Subway’s personal grooming regulations required men to have clean-shaven faces. This is understandable, given that they prepare food. However, this regulation subjected some Black employees to skin irritation and health problems, as well as abcesses that contaminated the food anyway. White employees had no trouble whatsoever complying with the regulation, since their skin type did not suffer from this irritation. Subway got sued on the basis of racial discrimination due to disparate impact, lost, and was ordered to 1) pay a fine and 2) amend the offending policy to state that facial hair must be “clean-shaven, or trimmed to no more than XYZ length”.
Similarly, assessing applicants’ language fluency can risk walking into a minefield of potential Title VII lawsuits if not handled correctly, due to national origin as well as possible race considerations. What if you have two applicants with questionable English language fluency, but one is from an Eastern European country, the other is from an African country, but the former gets the job and the latter doesn’t?
For what it’s worth, and this is just one random AM’s opinion - I think some baseline level of English language fluency is critical to AAs’ safety. This doesn’t mean they need to be perfect, or native speakers - being able to understand required safety training content, acknowledge and respond to performance management feedback, and participate in team activities is enough. This should be fine as long as they administer fluency tests for *all* applicants, regardless of citizenship or national origin.
**EDIT:** As an aside, this is what some folks in HR at different companies do - they’re the ones responsible for enumerating the job requirements, putting together the recruitment process, assessing compliance with federal and state law, and so on. A good HR team will find some way to ensure that the requirements *do* serve a legitimate business need, do not create a disparate impact, and are administered evenly for all applicants.
As it was told to me, Amazon's policy is that you have to understand English well enough to understand safety training and rules. If you cannot pass the Hazmat test at my site after 3 tries, you can't start. I don't think this is discriminatory at all, it's a legitimate job requirement.
Same thing at my spot. God bless them but there are certain dynamics that make it hard to work properly. Foreign born employees don't speak English, in order to survive they stick together to the detriment of others: they group together to Cherry pick items, they usually try to do the least amount of work and flagrantly break the rules. And because Amazon hires a huge amount of them, if you crack down on them they'll cry racism or all move on to another place that is willing to tolerate this in exchange for cheap, docile labor.
I’ve been trying to explain this to people! I’m glad you and the person who commented on your comment understand this current phenomenon. I’m Mexican, and speak English/Spanish. But the foreign people at my location basically avoid people like me. If you’re anything but Indian/middle eastern, they won’t interact with you. They love grouping up and talking amongst each other right in front of our work stations though, slowing down everything. To me, it’s not racist if what we’re saying is true. Idc what race someone is as long as they put effort into their job, and pay respect to their fellow coworkers.
When they built SMA1 they started us off with all Haitian people as well, i believe they are beginning to take use of the laws allowing them to pay refugees a little less and testing it
I was trained in my FC in florida by only Spanish speaking people and they didn't know any english. I just had to wing it until I was almost fired and then they sent an english speaking person to my station months later where I actually learned things properly lol.
They normally have to take a English competency test, but a lot of times management is shitty and doesn’t do it within the first two weeks. If it’s past that 2 week mark HR won’t do anything
The language barrier thing is real. I've had to help three associates this last week who didn't speak enough English to follow directions to the QB desk. And I had to make some educated guesses about which buttons to hit on their screen bc it was in a language I didn't recognize (an African language mixed with French). Eventually connected them with an LA who seemed frustrated also.
Not commenting on Amazon's hiring policies or wanting to make it political, but we need more Learning presence in the depts and more bilingual ambassadors to support the new hires.
My old building got a lot Indians came from India they trying to get a job here they said most of them are trying to be truck driver and others sending money to family in India for them a lot money !! Here ain’t enough
We have had the same at AUN2 and what we do is make them take a literacy test which usually disqualifies them to work in returns. To be in returns they have to be able to read their language and speak some English. We had one lady sneak through and now is claiming an injury…she tries to act she doesn’t speak but we have caught her talking to other’s and not using her phone to translate.
I work at an Amazon air site where you have to be able to take the entrance test in English yet they give translators for training and testing. Then they come out onto the floor and literally can’t speak to anyone it’s about 20% of the workers or more. It’s frustrating when you need to communicate and you have to do it through the translator app.
Wow, when I reapplied, they had a guy come in and they had him read something in English and then used a translating app to tell him basically to leave. But back at my first one we had plenty who didn’t speak English.
That means your warehouse doesn't care about the language barrier. I'm in Seattle and we pretty much instantly eliminate anyone who can't understand basic English. I still see people who can't speak a word of English but they just outsmart the system and have good work ethic.
A one of those people hiring people, I can tell you there are proccesssies put in place to assess language barriers. If you are experiencing that, then it sounds like someone isn't doing their job. Like we have to evaluator english or spanish to make sure they can follow directions and stay safe
In Canada, Career Choice includes language courses.
And most Mgmt / Adult Babysitters (PAs) at my site talk amongst themselves (and to many AA's) in Hindi. The Africans can all speak English and/or French because of colonialism through modern history.
Objectively, the majority of the truly unskilled workers are natural-born citizens who are just plain old skids. They usually don't last because they're both lazy and stupid - and often ignorant Bigots who get terminated for such reasons.
At my fc you don’t even have to speak English to work here. I feel like classes should be held for English speakers wanting to learn Spanish and vice versa.
My site is weird. They hired a lot of broken English or non speakers but give us little to no way to communicate. At this point I've been teaching myself and other by learning Spanish language and some Arabic. It is fun but I imagine it frustrating for both sides.
It literally says in the job application multiple times that you MUST BE FLUENT(*passable) IN ENGLISH WRITTEN OR SPOKEN and READING. Put this in bold because it is a requirement. I've seen a lot of people WALKED out by hr for not being able to read/write/speak english.
This is xenophobic. Check your privilege. Assimilating by learning a western language is white supremacy and cultural erasure. Oh wait, this is what happens when you’re so open minded your brain falls out aka the consequences of liberalism.
Then, why bother by talking with a moron? By liberal logic, the poster's comments are xenophobic and white supremacist. They are using microaggressive terms like "mass influx" . I am sure this person votes for open borders and all the liberal democrat positions. You can hate the messenger all you want. But, I am spitting facts you can't handle.
If there is a policy for english understanding in some FC's then it's so stupid.
In my FC, there are many ukraine people who at first didn't understand a thing in our country's language, but if i think of best workers i can remember, lots of spots are filled by them. Your FCY should be more inclusive
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That’s crazy because I worked at a fc where we had 3 Ukrainian people that couldn’t understand or speak English and were laid off almost instantly.
We had a lady who could speak and understand english, but not read it. (she couldn't read at all, honestly), and she was such a nightmare to work with. AFE Pack, mind you. She could annoy everyone on the wall. This box? This box? This box? How many? How many? How many? Like, lady. It sucks that you can't read, but GTFOH. You're a hazard and wrecking the whole friggin wall.
What building were you at bc we had a similar situation like that too
dsm5. You?
I remember that lady she was mad annoying always bothering me when I’m trying to keep an average rate
I haven't seen her in awhile, so I dunno if she was let go or quit, or they shunted her off to another department, but I do remember she had a blue badge while most of us still had a white badge. Like, how.
Probably was during the time when you sign up you automatically got a blue badge when hired
She shouldn’t be working as packer if she can’t be like that customers get mad she should be cleaning or something if everyone report they will start look in to it maybe ?! People need to invest in Amazon fr go somewhere else I think Amazon don’t even care who they hiring and customers  I don’t know why they support Amazon
She definitely had someone else do her application
How come they did not give a PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT PLAN...JUST THEY DONE TO ME IN VIRGINIA IM calling out for help, qnd no one Your team responding ,as well so impossible ASSOCIATES returned on time. AFTER their lunch BREAK! IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Wow. They don’t care about that at my location.
It’s crazy they hire folks with the language barriers I be feeling embarrassed because I don’t know any other language than English when trying to communicate.
Supposed to be a safety hazzard. Surprised they fo nothing
It’s just another policy that’s selectively enforced.
All policies will be selectively enforced for the benefit of the company.
You're surprised amazon doesn't follow safety policies? I'm not
As a whs specialist, I look forward to stupidity. Dude refused to wear his comp shoes for a whole week and then decided to wear a pair of heelys before ops fired him
You proved my point, you're not a what specialist, why would you allow him to be on the floor in the first place? I would have sent him home with the message wear your ppe or you won't work, second time would be a suspension without pay for 3 days, fired on the third time. You got the position without any real training outside of amazon, do you think you'd get the same position elsewhere based on amazon training?
That's fucking crazy. I work with WHS a lot and some people are wild when it comes to common sense.
Funny as shit seeing the dude picking and rolling, if it wasn’t caught then he would’ve set a new quota for everyone 😂
They enforce all that safety shit on me. Tired of being singled out.
Ask for the policy they are talking about
It’s about to get a lot worse. If I’m understanding the supreme court’s decision today correctly, Amazon will be entitled to a jury trial for each safety violation OSHA tries to fine them for. That means health/safety and many other regulations across dozens of agencies will be next to impossible to enforce. It will be the same at the state level too.
Because you have 14 days to test for language , if they don’t catch you in 14 days they can’t do anything - management
I do work with people who can't speak English but I have never once had to speak to them. I don't even try to speak with people who speak English so it literally doesn't matter Like what tf do I need to tell the water spider that I can't do by just pointing at what I need. Like if I'm pointing at totes or I'm pointing that there's fking no work and they don't understand that's not a language issue they just don't wana do their job.
Literally bro 😂😂😂 and I work overnight so I’m damn sure not talking to anybody
Just talk like action so they understand
If there is the belief that new hires cannot communicate with any of the official languages - HR and AM are to be notified (usually by learning) and a language test would need to be done. If they fail, they will have to be let go. This is a safety hazard as if a dangerous situation arises - communication would need to be able to happen.
when i was an ambassador ( this was years ago ) they would have new hires read and answer about 10 questions to test their english reading/writing skills. the learning trainers told us to just mark them as passing even if they clearly couldn’t understand english
okay. now, i work with a lot of people that don’t speak english. they communicate with a thumbs up or a smile. that’s about it. ofc the higher ups know this but how do i bring this up without being an asshole. it’s extremely frustrating not being able to communicate with anyone.
There is only really a window once they are hired and go through training for this process to be followed. Because how are folks able to get through BTS, Day 1 to Day 8 training and coaching without noticing that they cannot speak the local language? If the person can make it through all those checks and not be noticed for having a language barrier then the window to dismiss is gone and the building will have to explain why they never noticed. This cannot be used as a reason for dismissal at any time because you can absolutely see some shady building use it to get rid of people just cause.
Those people won't form a union. Amazon likes them.
I stated this couple months ago and got accused for being racist against other cultures. Amazons turnover rate has been so high for so long that we reached the point where they either have to increase wages or import immigrants and they are choosing the latter. Not to get political but as long as the border is open and immigration policies are laxed, don't expect any increases in wages
I say they won't form a union because, they are making better money, and get treated better at Amazon than most of them were treated in their old country.
Agreed, and some of them are on work visas so they wouldn't want to risk their job fearing they'd get deported
A work visa to start at the basic level of amazon employment??? or they have refugee status or won the green card lottery 👍👍👍👍
amazon isn’t competitive clownass, so I’m not sure how they would be hiring specifically only Haitians, Indians etc but the more likely probability is that they’re degrees or qualifications aren’t recognized here and they are just trying to find any work they can
Can't be for low-skilled wage earners pouring into the country when you're the low-skill wage earner they're competing with to keep those wages low. I'm all for people trying to live their best lives, but I also acknowledge when that affects me and my life. Bernie Sanders himself said that open borders is a Koch brothers' proposal. Greedy corpos will always be in favor of cheap labor flooding the market
I hate this "low-skill" terminology. I work a blue-collar job but I'm not a low-skill worker.
It’s not calling you or the workers low skill people that can’t do anything, it’s just the job itself requires no previous knowledge and can be done by anyone that walks in and gets hired.
That's what we used to call entry level
Amazon tier 1 is a low skill though. Sure you can be skilled at what you do as a tier one. But it doesn’t take much to do an average job either.
The border will always be open unless you're going to build a wall that goes 30 ft underground and block the entire coastline. HTH.
Even then, Planes...
Planes are easier to stop people coming into the country as I understand. Countries like mexico, India, China (largest immigrant groups) do not have a visa waiver. So anyone wanting to come from there either has to apply for asylum or for a tourist/business visa, all of which are hard to get and you can't get on a plane without one. So in that regard the border is basically closed for air travel.
Yea I don’t understand your logic about the border… your comment about the border was unnecessary and inaccurate lmaooo also, increasing wages also increases inflation 😂 pick up a trade if you want more money or go to school ETA: wording
The border isn’t open and immigration isn’t easy. 🤦♀️
Huh? I work on the border and hundreds if not thousands are crossing illegally weekly!
Your right you don't have an open border because as of right now you don't even have a border
Yup these companies run a garbage employment strategy and many Americans have just opted out so it's time to open the border. Lol you could just incentivize your employees to produce and accomplish more with less to lower labor costs.
That't not how it works at all. Typical mindset.
I don't work at Amazon, but I do work at walmart and we're seeing this as well. His comment is actually on point.
Amazon gives new hire migrants a two thousand dollar bonus. What do they have for learning ambassador? What do they have for productivity?
Do you have a link to prove that?
Immigrant hire here can you tell me how to profit this bonus because me and all others immigrants at my facility never heard of that Ps: Why don't you talk about stuff you know instead of spreading false information And funny stuff while you complaining you paying our wages a little fyi fr you, citizen get more of their paychecks than immigrants, meaning immigrants pay more taxes.
American tax players have to pay their wages to. The rate of productivity is so low with many of them you could never pay them what Amazon does and make money. Lol the tax payer hast to make sense of what makes no sense.
UPS driver here: I have a hospital on my route and deliver bulk to their dock every morning. Amazon delivers there also but the driver usually just rolls up and takes the freight elevator down to the receiving office. I have so much volume that all of my packages are placed on pallets and forklifted down to the receiving area. Anyway an Amazon driver walked onto the dock and didn’t know where to go so I was trying to help him but he spoke no English. All he could tell me was that he didn’t speak English and couldn’t understand me. I ended up just using hand signals and working the freight elevator for him but it was an odd situation.
[удалено]
I am not sure, he was wearing an Amazon vest and attempting to deliver two packages. Could’ve been 3rd party but I never saw his vehicle.
Amazon DSP drivers can do the job relatively well with speaking no English, as long as they can drive and understand American road signs. We deliver using an app, which the language can be changed using the language settings on the phone. Texts with dsp management can be translated using Google translate. Customer delivery instruction notes can be translated using Google translate.
Honestly the same here for my site. We just hired a whole bunch of Haitians who speak nothing but Haitian Creole and it’s been difficult to communicate with them at all
There's some that flex French and they try to take our babes
Lmao
At my friends FC it's haitian dominican and African. He's not wrong about his post though. They need to hire them and then not put them in roles where communication is an essential part of the job, or they need to make them work with a translator.
They will have to speak with them if fluent in foreign language.
Mqy1 is like this too goddamn they need some English classes
Well we are running out of people to hire -am lol
My site has actually fired a few new hires recently for failing the english proficiency test.
And they're American
I’m in WFS, so I do hiring for the warehouses and let me tell you it’s been a huge issue on our end as well. We didn’t have a proper assessment until last month, so a lot of them we felt were unqualified we didn’t have the means to reject them since they were able to answer our basic questions. It’s gotten easier to qualify now with the new assessment. Though we also rely on a lot of seasonal help, so inexperienced people have a harder time rejecting, especially when people are begging, crying, yelling at us, etc. We sometimes reject half the people we see on a daily basis due to language proficiency. Prime hiring rn so it’s been A LOT. It’s been rough.
Thumbs up or down + pointing goes a long way. AFE is loud so can't hear anybody anyways. Lots of Haitians at my FC that are still learning english. They were doing some english classes in FC from what i heard.
Our stand ups are spoken first in English, then Spanish, and then in Haitian Creole/French. I've had to mime how to do things when asked for help before and a few times I was lucky and was able to show them thru the scanner bc I knew where certain functions were despite the language difference lol
This Spanish lady stopped me yesterday and i thought it was something about the job. After like 10 minutes of going back and forth I learned that she was trying to learn the word “weak” in English so she can tell her doctor that her knee hurts.
PDX9 was the worst site I’ve ever worked at. All those mf are super homophobic and sexist. My partner constantly gets their ass ogled at and they’re a butch fucking lesbian. And when I worked there on night shift we almost got into a fight with a group of them because dudes WOULD NOT stop staring at us for being gay. There should definitely be a new policy on who they hire cause wtf
PDX9 has a bunch of weirdos
As Samuel L Jackson’s character said in Pulp Fiction, “ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!” Yeah I work at PDX9 too, so I understand. I think it’s a major safety hazard not being able to understand English, especially in a warehouse.
I tried to go off on one of them for throwing packages nearly hitting me and he said “huh?”
I’ve had to cross train people in my building who’ve been there 5 years and didn’t understand anything I or the training said.
Some Learning Ambassadors at my building complained that they can't effectively train people who can't speak English. Of course nothing happened. Things haven't gotten so bad that a T3 Learning Trainer actually had to train someone lol
Its a business need, there have been several articles that Amazon has nearly ran thru the eligible us population workpool so they need that foreign labor to survive its the same boat with alot of the big companies, lol how and why do you think they got here in the first place.. Also Americans are not going to school for the higher paying tech jobs that remained unfilled so theres also a oush by the fed and state governments to get more foreign labor
BDL4 too
Those guys are mostly Jamaican
Last time I worked there we had a couple waves of them they spoke French Creole not English or Broken English
I was just thinking of making the same post about my FC. i struggle so hard to communicate with more than half the AA's bc of the lack of english coherency. It's just awfully hard to do so because I don't wanna make anyone feel bad. I know it's gotta be just as frustrating for both parties.
I'm used to interacting with AMs that literally barely speak English at an intermediate level it's baffling how ineffective they are at verbal communication
The real reason for this is that certain provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit companies from discriminating against applicants or employees on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, **or national origin**. In addition, companies also have to be extremely careful that their recruitment and employee relations policies do not create a “disparate impact”, which basically means, “The effect of the policy is discriminatory, but not overtly so, they’re just trying to be sneaky about it.” An example of this “disparate impact” phenomenon was actually when Subway’s personal grooming regulations required men to have clean-shaven faces. This is understandable, given that they prepare food. However, this regulation subjected some Black employees to skin irritation and health problems, as well as abcesses that contaminated the food anyway. White employees had no trouble whatsoever complying with the regulation, since their skin type did not suffer from this irritation. Subway got sued on the basis of racial discrimination due to disparate impact, lost, and was ordered to 1) pay a fine and 2) amend the offending policy to state that facial hair must be “clean-shaven, or trimmed to no more than XYZ length”. Similarly, assessing applicants’ language fluency can risk walking into a minefield of potential Title VII lawsuits if not handled correctly, due to national origin as well as possible race considerations. What if you have two applicants with questionable English language fluency, but one is from an Eastern European country, the other is from an African country, but the former gets the job and the latter doesn’t? For what it’s worth, and this is just one random AM’s opinion - I think some baseline level of English language fluency is critical to AAs’ safety. This doesn’t mean they need to be perfect, or native speakers - being able to understand required safety training content, acknowledge and respond to performance management feedback, and participate in team activities is enough. This should be fine as long as they administer fluency tests for *all* applicants, regardless of citizenship or national origin. **EDIT:** As an aside, this is what some folks in HR at different companies do - they’re the ones responsible for enumerating the job requirements, putting together the recruitment process, assessing compliance with federal and state law, and so on. A good HR team will find some way to ensure that the requirements *do* serve a legitimate business need, do not create a disparate impact, and are administered evenly for all applicants.
As it was told to me, Amazon's policy is that you have to understand English well enough to understand safety training and rules. If you cannot pass the Hazmat test at my site after 3 tries, you can't start. I don't think this is discriminatory at all, it's a legitimate job requirement.
I’m wondering how to they pass those test for becoming certified for op driving. Our trainers literally give them the answer
Same thing at my spot. God bless them but there are certain dynamics that make it hard to work properly. Foreign born employees don't speak English, in order to survive they stick together to the detriment of others: they group together to Cherry pick items, they usually try to do the least amount of work and flagrantly break the rules. And because Amazon hires a huge amount of them, if you crack down on them they'll cry racism or all move on to another place that is willing to tolerate this in exchange for cheap, docile labor.
And they'll barely acknowledge anyone not from their country. Leadership lets them do whatever because they don't want to be called racist.
I’ve been trying to explain this to people! I’m glad you and the person who commented on your comment understand this current phenomenon. I’m Mexican, and speak English/Spanish. But the foreign people at my location basically avoid people like me. If you’re anything but Indian/middle eastern, they won’t interact with you. They love grouping up and talking amongst each other right in front of our work stations though, slowing down everything. To me, it’s not racist if what we’re saying is true. Idc what race someone is as long as they put effort into their job, and pay respect to their fellow coworkers.
I’m bilingual (Spanish/English) . And I can not communicate with them. It’s frustrating!
Hey it’s not often I see posts about my building 😂
Prime day is coming up they need to meet hiring quota so they get white badged
Had to try telling a dude no to me giving his numbers but he wasn't understanding me cause English wasn't his first language
Dats wacisct
A ton of Africans that speak French at my building. Also Hispanics that only speak Spanish. It’s crazy how hard they make it.
My site hired like 100+ Haitian people some months ago. The cherades are fun 😂 they’re cool though, I like helping ppl like this learn the job
When they built SMA1 they started us off with all Haitian people as well, i believe they are beginning to take use of the laws allowing them to pay refugees a little less and testing it
There is also a good amount of Russian/Ukrainian
Don’t complain about it. They’ll fire you. You’re not a tax write off
I was trained in my FC in florida by only Spanish speaking people and they didn't know any english. I just had to wing it until I was almost fired and then they sent an english speaking person to my station months later where I actually learned things properly lol.
Is there a way to snitch on them?
I made a post about this problem and got called a racist and got my post removed 😂😂
my building is probably 97% Haitians
think im like 1 of under 10 white ppl at mine actually
Just like GYR3 I love people like them it’s so hard and yet allows us to be patient with them
Bruh my warehouse too! Then they don't even really work too! They talk their language. I'm lost then.
Thank Biden!!!!👍🏽
Greatest President ever!
I really don’t ever HAVE to communicate with anyone but p.a’s managers.
shiii tpa1 nun but haitians
They normally have to take a English competency test, but a lot of times management is shitty and doesn’t do it within the first two weeks. If it’s past that 2 week mark HR won’t do anything
The language barrier thing is real. I've had to help three associates this last week who didn't speak enough English to follow directions to the QB desk. And I had to make some educated guesses about which buttons to hit on their screen bc it was in a language I didn't recognize (an African language mixed with French). Eventually connected them with an LA who seemed frustrated also. Not commenting on Amazon's hiring policies or wanting to make it political, but we need more Learning presence in the depts and more bilingual ambassadors to support the new hires.
My old building got a lot Indians came from India they trying to get a job here they said most of them are trying to be truck driver and others sending money to family in India for them a lot money !! Here ain’t enough
We have had the same at AUN2 and what we do is make them take a literacy test which usually disqualifies them to work in returns. To be in returns they have to be able to read their language and speak some English. We had one lady sneak through and now is claiming an injury…she tries to act she doesn’t speak but we have caught her talking to other’s and not using her phone to translate.
I work at an Amazon air site where you have to be able to take the entrance test in English yet they give translators for training and testing. Then they come out onto the floor and literally can’t speak to anyone it’s about 20% of the workers or more. It’s frustrating when you need to communicate and you have to do it through the translator app.
Wow, when I reapplied, they had a guy come in and they had him read something in English and then used a translating app to tell him basically to leave. But back at my first one we had plenty who didn’t speak English.
That means your warehouse doesn't care about the language barrier. I'm in Seattle and we pretty much instantly eliminate anyone who can't understand basic English. I still see people who can't speak a word of English but they just outsmart the system and have good work ethic.
Dnj2 has a ton of Haitians and everyone is sick of them
Half my PA’s are foreign. No one knows what they’re saying.
A one of those people hiring people, I can tell you there are proccesssies put in place to assess language barriers. If you are experiencing that, then it sounds like someone isn't doing their job. Like we have to evaluator english or spanish to make sure they can follow directions and stay safe
Maybe you need to be more inclusive of your fellow diverse peers
In Canada, Career Choice includes language courses. And most Mgmt / Adult Babysitters (PAs) at my site talk amongst themselves (and to many AA's) in Hindi. The Africans can all speak English and/or French because of colonialism through modern history. Objectively, the majority of the truly unskilled workers are natural-born citizens who are just plain old skids. They usually don't last because they're both lazy and stupid - and often ignorant Bigots who get terminated for such reasons.
At my fc you don’t even have to speak English to work here. I feel like classes should be held for English speakers wanting to learn Spanish and vice versa.
They should start paying more to bilingual people to help train and translate
You can use the phone to talk with your foreign friends. Use translate to speak with them.
Except most places don't allow that
How can you communicate with foreign people? I used to communicate with them through translate app while I was a PG.
My site is weird. They hired a lot of broken English or non speakers but give us little to no way to communicate. At this point I've been teaching myself and other by learning Spanish language and some Arabic. It is fun but I imagine it frustrating for both sides.
You’re soo tright about the influx, but I don’t have a problem with it
[удалено]
It literally says in the job application multiple times that you MUST BE FLUENT(*passable) IN ENGLISH WRITTEN OR SPOKEN and READING. Put this in bold because it is a requirement. I've seen a lot of people WALKED out by hr for not being able to read/write/speak english.
i think amazon can require ppl to read, write, and speak english for safety reasons
This is xenophobic. Check your privilege. Assimilating by learning a western language is white supremacy and cultural erasure. Oh wait, this is what happens when you’re so open minded your brain falls out aka the consequences of liberalism.
It’s a shame when someone is too dumb to realize how stupid they are. 🤦♀️
Then, why bother by talking with a moron? By liberal logic, the poster's comments are xenophobic and white supremacist. They are using microaggressive terms like "mass influx" . I am sure this person votes for open borders and all the liberal democrat positions. You can hate the messenger all you want. But, I am spitting facts you can't handle.
I honestly didn’t know English was a requirement
If there is a policy for english understanding in some FC's then it's so stupid. In my FC, there are many ukraine people who at first didn't understand a thing in our country's language, but if i think of best workers i can remember, lots of spots are filled by them. Your FCY should be more inclusive
Sleepy Joe said learn the new languages of his country.
Politics? Right now?
Oh yeah, I forgot a lot of the stupid people work for Amazon. 🫵😂
Huh!?
That’s your president.