In February, one of the world’s richest employers, Amazon, announced it had refunded nearly $2m to more than 700 overseas workers who had been forced to pay big recruiting fees to get work at the company’s warehouses in Saudi Arabia.
It was a rare win for migrant laborers, a class of vulnerable workers who are often targeted for deceptive recruiting tactics and other abuses. One Nepali laborer said he was so shocked when a refund from Amazon appeared in his bank account that he stayed up much of the night, rechecking his account balance on his phone.
But not all of the migrants who had worked for Amazon in Saudi Arabia are happy with the online retailer’s efforts to make things right. Many say they never got any reimbursement from the company.
Thirty-three of the 44 current and former Amazon contract workers interviewed for this story said they haven’t received reimbursement from the company – even though they had worked within the company’s Saudi operations and had paid large recruiting fees.
Several workers from Nepal who didn’t receive refunds said they feel doubly mistreated by being exploited as part of their work at Amazon warehouses and then by not getting the restitution the company promised.
“In Saudi, many people asked questions about our recruitment fees. Amazon and other organizations also asked questions. But they haven’t reimbursed money yet,” said Hari Prasad Mudbari, a Nepali laborer who paid roughly $1,500 in recruiting fees and other costs to land a job as a contract worker at an Amazon warehouse in Saudi Arabia. “Now I feel like they played a game against me.”
In a statement in response to questions for this story, Amazon said it has arranged reimbursement for another 151 workers since its announcement in February and that it is continuing to work to identify and pay workers who qualify for compensation.
“These are complex processes that take time, and we’re doing our best to expedite reimbursement,” Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan said in the written statement. “We’re also grateful to the workers who have participated throughout this process and shared their experiences. Our priority remains the safety and well-being of workers.”
Santosh Biswakarma, a worker from Nepal who hasn’t been reimbursed for the roughly $1,700 in recruiting costs he paid to get work at an Amazon warehouse in Saudi Arabia, said the delays in compensating workers were unacceptable.
“If Amazon wanted to give us the money back, they could have done it right away,” he said. “It’s a big, rich company. They could do it immediately.”
‘Your name is not on the list’
Amazon employs 1.5 million people around the globe. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos – the second richest person in the world – has said he wants to make the company the “Earth’s best employer”. Amazon says it strives to “ensure that the products and services we provide are produced in a way that respects human rights”.
The complaints from migrant workers from Nepal and other Asian countries come as US Amazon workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have launched a national strike – and weeks after Black Friday worker actions in more than 20 countries protested the company’s labor and environmental practices.
The complaints about Amazon’s Saudi operations first came to light more than a year ago.
In October 2023 a joint reporting partnership – including the Guardian US, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, NBC News and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism – revealed the stories of more than 50 migrant laborers who said they were tricked by recruiting agencies in Nepal and then suffered under unfair conditions at warehouses operated by Amazon in Saudi Arabia.
The Guardian US and its partners reported at the time that independent recruiters in Nepal had required them to pay recruiting fees – ranging from roughly $830 to $2,300 – that far exceeded what’s allowed by Nepal’s government and run afoul of American and United Nations standards.
Most of the workers said the recruiters in Nepal falsely promised they would work directly for Amazon. Instead, these workers said, they ended up working for Saudi labor supply firms that placed them in short-term contract jobs at Amazon warehouses, then siphoned away much of their wages.
“Amazon is successful, but what about its workers?” Mudbari said. “There is a dark side behind its success. They could have hired us directly. We were interviewed, passed the exams to join the job. They should have increased our salary. They didn’t give a fair salary.”
In response to the media partners’ investigation and a separate investigation by the human rights group Amnesty International, Amazon said it was “deeply concerned” that some of its contract workers in Saudi Arabia were not treated with “the dignity and respect they deserve”.
Amazon worked with a human rights consulting group based in London, Impactt, to contact workers and ask them about their recruiting fees. In February, Amazon revealed that it had paid out $1.9m to workers from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries.
US law and UN standards say that workers should not be required to pay recruiting fees – it should be up to the employer to pay the recruiting firms. Amazon’s own standards – which apply not only to the company itself but also to contractors, recruiters and others involved in its supply chains – say “workers may not be charged fees at any point in the recruitment process”.
Several workers from Nepal said Amazon staffers and others asked them about their recruiting fees and related expenses, giving them hope they might get refunds. But after arriving home to Nepal with no further information and a long wait, they have been left with frustration and lost hopes.
Prakash Raya, a Nepali who worked for Amazon in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, spent more than $1,600 to cover recruiting fees and other costs. He has no idea why some workers have received money and why others – including him – haven’t.
“How did they determine eligibility? I don’t know,” Raya said. “Amazon should return my fees.”
When Raya heard that some of his co-workers had received reimbursements, he reached out to Impactt, the consulting firm that helped Amazon arrange the refunds. In a voice message sent to Raya, an Impactt staffer told him: “Your name was not in the list, so we couldn’t send money to you. We can ask Amazon, but it’s up to them to make a decision … If Amazon approves, you may get money. But we cannot guarantee that.”
Months later, Raya still hasn’t received any reimbursement.
Callahan, the Amazon spokesperson, said the process of getting payments to workers still owed reimbursements has been complicated by the fact that many workers have gone back to Nepal and other countries and in some cases have changed their phone numbers or their home addresses.
The media partners tracked down scores of workers for this story and previous stories by finding them on Facebook or getting referrals from their co-workers.
High interest
Amazon said in February that it calculated the reimbursements by taking into account a variety of factors, including the fees workers reported paying, inflation and changes in exchange rates.
But current and former workers who did receive reimbursements for their recruiting fees said the company’s reimbursement formula left out an important factor: nearly all of the workers had to borrow money at high rates to cover the recruitment fees they had been required to pay.
They said their poverty was so severe – and the recruiting fees were so exorbitant – that the only way for most of them to pay the fees was to borrow from village lenders that charge sky-high rates.
Most of the workers interviewed for this story said they paid between 24% and 48% annual interest for their loans. Three said they paid between 10% and 18% and two said their interest rates were over 55%.
One of the workers who received a refund, Binod Ghimire, said he had taken out a loan of nearly $1,700 to pay his recruitment costs. Because of the loan’s 36% interest rate, he said, he had to shell out $2,570 to pay off his loan.
But Amazon reimbursed him just over $1,600, according to a document from Impactt that Ghimire shared with the Guardian US.
“It’s not full compensation,” he said.
Shree Niwash Kumar Ram, who worked for Amazon in Saudi Arabia from 2021 to early 2023, said he paid 48% interest on the loan he took out to pay his recruiting costs, but that additional burden wasn’t included in the $2,450 reimbursement Amazon sent him.
Amazon’s Callahan said that in determining workers’ reimbursements, the company did take into account the interest costs incurred on their loans.
Ram, Ghimire and two other workers said Amazon representatives who asked them about their recruitment fees never asked them about the interest rates they paid on their loans. Ghimire said he volunteered details about his loan charges without being asked, but the reimbursement he ultimately received from Amazon clearly didn’t reflect those costs.
Other issues
Beyond recruiting fees and loan costs, workers interviewed for this story also said they were disappointed that Amazon failed to acknowledge and compensate them for other kinds of unjust treatment that they said they suffered.
Many workers describe, for example, arriving in Saudi Arabia with little money in their pockets and then having to wait days or even weeks with no work and no pay.
Twenty-four workers interviewed for this story said that they waited between three days to four weeks to begin work. To buy food, they said, they had to get loans from the labor supply companies that acted as a middleman between them and Amazon. After they started work, the food loan payments were deducted from their wages.
Things were even worse, workers said, when Amazon laid off large numbers of the migrant workers when customer orders slowed – or fired them individually for lapses such as pulling the wrong products off shelves or using a personal cellphone in the warehouse. After these terminations, they said, they received no wages or food allowance. Some were stuck for weeks or months waiting for their labor supply company to place them back with Amazon or find some other employer for them in Saudi Arabia.
Callahan, the Amazon spokesperson, said the reimbursements took into account periods when the workers were not working or being paid.
She added that Amazon has worked to improve practices going forward, carrying out more than 30 audits of its labor vendors in Saudi Arabia, with plans for more in the future. She said the company also worked with the firms to improve housing and food quality for contract workers.
‘Pain is same for all’
Two of the workers who were featured in the media partners’ articles – Momtaj Mansur and Surendra Kumar Lama – received large reimbursements from Amazon.
Both are now back home in Nepal. Both said they were pleased to get the reimbursements from Amazon, but said they suffered greatly before they got the payments.
Lama returned home from Saudi Arabia sick and was unable to work. With no way to repay the loan and support his family, he sent his wife to work in the United Arab Emirates.
“Had Amazon paid this money some months earlier, I wouldn’t have sent my wife to the UAE,” he said. “But I didn’t have any other way.”
Mansur said money lenders pressured his family to repay the loans that he took out to cover the stiff fees he had to pay to get to – and leave – Saudi Arabia. His brother couldn’t participate in school exams due to the lack of money. His grandfather’s hernia surgery was postponed. Having no other options to ward off the moneylenders, he said, he sold a patch of land.
Mansur said Amazon should “give the money back to all other workers. Wherever they work, whichever country they’re from, whatever work they do, if they’ve paid unnecessary fees to get a job, repay their money. Whatever nationality they are, the pain is the same for all.”
Michael Hudson contributed to this story
