Amazon's Flex delivery program bills itself as "a flexible way of earning extra money on your own schedule."
A new report from a union-backed workers' rights non-profit suggests that's not quite the case.
The report, released on Wednesday by the advocacy group National Employment Law Project, points to signs that Amazon Flex workers may not have as much flexibility as Amazon suggests they do.
Flex, which Amazon started in 2015, lets gig workers deliver packages for the company using their own vehicles.
Maya Pinto, senior researcher and policy analyst at NELP, interviewed between September and May eight Amazon Flex drivers in New Jersey who are organizing. The drivers said they sometimes had trouble working as much as they wanted and on the schedules that they preferred.
Two of the Flex workers whom Pinto interviewed said Amazon's app would sometimes prevent them from signing up for more than five hours of work a day, which meant they ended up working less than 40 hours a week, including weekend shifts. The Flex drivers said that they were sometimes locked out of the app after working some shifts.
"The app lockouts are really preventing Flex drivers from being free to choose when they want to work," she said.
Amazon spokesperson Amber Plunkett told Business Insider that the company hadn't reviewed the report and that it appears to be "another attempt by NELP to intentionally leave out important context in order to fit their own narrative."
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