New documents reveal harsh scrutiny Amazon workers toil under in warehouses

Newly released documents reveal the brutal working conditions in Amazon warehouses.

A new filing with the National Labor Relations Board obtained by Motherboard gives a detailed look into the ways Amazon tracks and records every minute of "time off task" -- or TOT -- with the same handheld scanners that warehouse associates use to track customer packages.

The documents show workers can receive a written warning for accumulating 30 minutes of time off task in a day once per one-year period, and they can be fired for accumulating 120 minutes of TOT in a single day or 30 minutes on three separate days in a one-year period.

Amazon tracks by the minute how much time workers spend talking to other employees, using the bathroom, heading to the wrong floor or other time workers can't account for, and shift managers must use the TOT tool to identify and write up the top offender under their management each shift.

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Managers could interrogate at least three workers about their activity per shift, and the documents show an internal list of 18 warehouse workers who were terminated for accumulating more than two hours of TOT in a single day over a two-month period.