On Ozone as in a zone – in what conditions do marketplace employees work

Source In the suburbs, employees of the Ozon warehouse fell ill en masse with meningitis. More than 30 people ended up in the infectious diseases department. Life's special correspondent worked at the company's warehouse in Khorugvin, and he has a lot to tell. Ozon employees get meningitis

According to preliminary data, all infected Ozon employees lived in a hostel in Nakhabino, there were up to five people in one room. The symptoms appeared at the same time a couple of days ago: headache, fever and cough. Despite feeling unwell, Ozon employees continued to go to work. The situation worsened, the infected were hospitalized. Some of them are in intensive care.

Recently, Ozon has become a popular online store where people from all regions of Russia buy. As the marketplace grew, review sites became full of negativity. There are thousands of reviews on Ozon with photo reports on the Internet. Buyers write about goods whose quality no one controls, about breakdowns, a mess with couriers, torn packaging. Someone gets moldy products, someone gets coffee beans drenched in shampoo. Ozon responds to complaints with standard replies: they say, we are sorry that this happened, there were no violations in storage. recreation. People get fined all the time.

—”I obey and obey” is the motto of the Ozon warehouse employees, not the phrase of a fairy-tale magical character from a children's fairy tale, writes one of the former employees.

— This is a complete separation of life before and after the start of work at Ozon warehouses. You will no longer be human! From now on, you are Gollum, walking around a huge room with boxes. Your pupils will stop receiving sunlight, because you will work at night and sleep in your cave during the day. The taste of human food will become alien to you, and the stomach will only accept raw meat. Bread will become an inaccessible delicacy, since, having entered the night shift, you will already leave only after 12 hours tired and will not have time to eat. Sleep – and again on the shift, – adds another.

Employees are also literally afraid of burning out at work: in August, an Ozon warehouse blazed in Novaya Riga. A building of one hundred thousand squares was extinguished by one and a half hundred firefighters for almost five days. Goods worth 17 billion rubles were burned in the fire, a person died. The marketplace did not admit its guilt, although, according to one of the main versions, it was the violation of fire safety rules that led to the fire.

The trade union of Ozon workers found violations in a warehouse in Tver. Video © LIFE

In September, the Ozon workers' union found violations in the extinguishing systems in a warehouse in Tver. In addition, canisters of engine oil were stored side by side with cardboard boxes containing food and clothing. And dangerous goods were next to safe goods on pallets, which is hardly correct.

Employees told Life that at the end of October the situation had not changed dramatically, except that the fire hoses were rewound.

Why are Ozon employees tagged

The Life correspondent spent two shifts in a warehouse in Khorugvin, Moscow Region, and these conditions are similar to slave ones. Dozens of buses arrive here every day, bringing thousands of people, a good half of which are shift workers from neighboring countries. The working shift at the warehouse starts at eight in the morning, but you need to arrive by 7:30 in order to have time to go through security and go up to your floor. In the warehouses themselves, the fittest survive. You almost have to fight for a special box for goods. And the cart will be taken away by colleagues if you gape. The most dexterous in the warehouse are migrants, who are in the majority here. Some do not understand Russian at all and do not speak it.

Most of the shift workers got their jobs through an intermediary company recruiting provincials. A short conversation on the phone, you send a photo of your passport – and that's it, you're accepted. This provides a hostel. True, the work schedule is 6/1 or 7/0 for 12 hours. Whereas full-time employees work 2/2. To the employment contract, you will already be taken a signed application for dismissal of your own free will with an open date and signature, and in the annex there will be an agreement to compensate for possible damage.

Anyone entering the operational zone of the warehouse needs to seal their clothes. Interns who have not yet been given a robe are spoiled by piercing T-shirts, pants and sneakers with a knife, marking with a special orange seal. The person is assigned an identification number by which the system sees him.

Ozon can leave you without pants

You can only take a pass and the issued data collection terminal (TSD) with you. At the entrance and exit, everyone passes through the frame of the metal detector. If he squeaks, they will be sent to a body search, where they are forced to take off his pants to the knees, pull up his T-shirt, and also take off his shoes. Our special correspondent witnessed how a lighter was found on an intern. He was immediately fired. Although before the fire in New Riga, they were only fined for this. It seems that this is the only thing that has changed in the fire rules of the marketplace. The warehouse is still a mess.

The entire warehouse is divided into four zones: a common area where, as the foreman said, “from loaf to condom” is stored; zone plus 17 degrees with food and rats; aerosols; safe-zone with expensive goods.

If you order creams from expensive imported brands on Ozon, keep in mind that they are stored in the warehouse next to the toilet and pipe cleaners. No one separates caustic household chemicals and skin care cosmetics.

Household chemicals are stored on the first floor of the storage mezzanine. And there is a reason for this: boxes of gels and powders regularly fall on the floor and on the heads of employees. Liquids leak, staining not only the goods, but also the floor of the mezzanine. And it's made of mesh. From the first floor you can see the fourth. It turns out that employees go over each other's heads. And dust and dirt from the upper floors fly to the lower ones, settling on the goods and employees. But mesh construction is a fire safety requirement.

Here, below, is a real paradise for mice that spoil goods. Nobody really cares. Many of the boxes were full of rubbish, one even contained broken glass. Sometimes in the cells with the goods you can find empty energy bottles and chocolate wrappers. Some of the goods are lying on the floor, they walk on it with their feet and pass with a cart.

How much they earn at Ozon

In general, the warehouse left a rather depressing impression: dirt, unsanitary conditions and slave labor. Although for many this work is salvation. In a month, an experienced warehouse employee can earn about 60 thousand rubles.

But for this money, you need to spend all 12 hours of the shift on your feet, rolling a cart around the warehouse and jumping on the shelves, “clicking” boxes with goods. The weight of the box is not limited – up to 49 kg come across. Administrators say that the norm per shift is 800 orders, then the amount earned will be 2750 rubles.

To fulfill the norm, as Life found out, is unrealistic. It takes a minute to find a product, take it, scan it and put it in the basket. As a result, the shift takes 800 minutes. And this is 13 hours, although there are 12 shifts. The employee is also entitled to three breaks (two of 15 minutes and one half hour). Of these, you will spend ten minutes passing through the security checkpoint and exiting the operational area, and another five you will stand in line for the toilet. At the same time, they are mercilessly fined for everything, including non-compliance with the norm.

Although Ozon talks about some kind of mission, the company clearly prefers money to the idea. For example, a couple of weeks ago, the company blocked a teen merch with a rainbow that had six colors, like on the LGBT flag. Businessmen poured their clothes on the marketplace with prints already faded in the photo, but all with the same message. And Ozon thought it was normal.

The smell of mice and rot persists for several hours even after a short walk through the Ozon warehouse. Therefore, the employees themselves do not order anything here.

Who owns Ozon

The financial performance of the marketplace is growing at times every year. First, Ozon was helped by the pandemic (restrictions and closed stores), now sanctions. In the second quarter of 2022 alone, amid increased demand, the total number of orders increased by 121%.

Ozon's Russian headquarters is based in a prestigious location – on the 41st floor of the Federation Tower in Moscow City “. From here, the marketplace plans to conquer the country.

A small book-selling company founded in 1998 has undergone a major evolution by now. Now the total area of ​​Ozon's warehouses, including sorting centers, is 1,000,000 m². The founders of the company Alexander Egorov and Dmitry Rudakov went out of business in the winter of 2002, since then almost nothing is known about them.

The parent company of Ozon Holdings Limited is located in Cyprus, which, as a European country, is recognized in Russia as an “unfriendly state”. According to the law, investors who want to get out of Russian business will not be able to donate, exchange or transfer assets to anyone, even to pay off a debt. Not to mention the sale. There is no official report on the ownership structure of Ozon on the company's website.

According to business registers, 25% of Ozon Holdings Limited is owned by AFK Sistema, which, along with Baring Vostok after Ozon's IPO, is the largest shareholder. The shares of Sistema and Baring – 37.2% each, another 6.2% – from a group of top managers and members of the board of directors of the company, 4.7% – from the Index Ventures fund, 4.5% – from Princeville Global. Last year, the head of Baring Vostok, Michael Calvey, was given a five and a half year suspended sentence in Russia for embezzling funds from Vostochny Bank.

Ozon's main operator in Russia is Internet Solutions LLC, which May of this year, a certain Sergei Pankov is in charge. At the same time, Ozon Business Development Director Sergey Belyakov was appointed to the post of General Director of Ozon Holding LLC. Previously, both organizations were headed by Alexander Shulgin, who, after the start of the special operation, fell under Western sanctions and was forced to leave his posts.

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