Dozens of contract workers at Amazon warehouses say they were tricked into toiling and living in grueling, squalid conditions
Momtaj Mansur wanted to go home to his mom and his brother and the pastures of Nepal’s southern plains. He felt like a prisoner, he says, in a roach-infested bunkhouse in Saudi Arabia, out of work, hungry and deep in debt.
McDonald’s and Amazon’s ties to alleged labor trafficking: five key takeaways
Read more
The 23-year-old had come to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, in 2021 to work for one of the world’s biggest companies: Amazon.
Instead of his dream job, he says, he found low pay and misery. Amazon managers berated him, he says, for being too slow as he hustled across a vast two-story warehouse, grabbing iPhones and other items ordered by customers across the Arabian peninsula.
Then in May 2022, he says, he and many of his Nepali co-workers were abruptly let go from their jobs at the Amazon warehouse. They were 2,400 miles from home with no wages and little food.
Mansur says he pleaded with the Saudi labor supply company that held their employment contracts and had placed them in what amounted to temporary positions at Amazon: if there was no more work, let them return to Nepal.
The Saudi firm, he says,...
It’s starting to look like somebody’s got a serious vendetta against Future and will stop at nothing to try and destroy his brand and career because the math isn’t mathing and facts just aren’t li...