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The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

theguardian.com

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Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#21

Post by lonelappde »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

The story has a link to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s 2019 Dirty Dozen list of the most dangerous employers in the United States. Facebook is on that list, which surprised me at first, but then I guess it made sense: ● Facebook contracts with outside companies for low-paid moderators who remove objectionable content from its global social network ● “Every day, every minute… heads being cut…

That's an activist group, not a scientific group. Which is fine, but it means that "most dangerous" means "most politically interesting", not most likely to cause harm or death by some particular statistical measure.

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#22

Post by lonelappde »

makomk wrote: post #18
x3ro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes it quite clear that this is not about people dying like you mentioned, but about delayed medical attention in large Amazon facilities that result in potentially preventable fatalities.

So basically it's about people dying like the guy described above, except that the Amazon employees didn't even technically die on the job because they were found relatively promptly and received medical care?

"fatalities" means "die".

Yes, it's possible to sustain a person in a technically animated state for a few minutes after vital systems have crashed.

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#23

Post by lonelappde »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #9
geogra4 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was he old? was it a heart attack? I mean, just a random death? I think this has to be highly unusual at a desk job.

It's actually common enough in Japan that they have a word for it. And if you start to type "Japanese word for dying..." you get auto suggestions of "of overwork" and "at your desk," among others. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-karoshi-japanese-wor... (Which I not commentary on the article under discussion per se. Please don't infer such.) (Edited for clarity.)

That because it's statistically improbable and interesting, not probable.

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#24

Post by gridlockd »

> The incident is among the latest in a series of accidents and fatalities that have led to Amazon’s inclusion on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s 2019 Dirty Dozen list of the most dangerous employers in the United States.

Completely ridiculous. Look at the list:

http://nationalcosh.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2019_Dir...

In five out of these twelve, nobody actually died.

Those may be shitty jobs/companies, but they're not exceptionally dangerous - especially not Amazon.

This is spitting in the face of people who actually have dangerous jobs with exceptional risks:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangerou...

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#25

Post by [deleted] »

burger_moon wrote: post #14

You know where there isn't outcry about this? In Seattle at the Amazon corp offices. There are regular company wide email threads (seattle-chatter@ among others) making jokes about the shitty working conditions of warehouse employees. Walking around the hallways and lunch areas you hear people making jokes about how awful it is. Nobody there cares. Change the type of free coffee in the lunch areas though and all hell…

[deleted]

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#26

Post by DoreenMichele »

lonelappde wrote: post #23
DoreenMichele wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually common enough in Japan that they have a word for it. And if you start to type "Japanese word for dying..." you get auto suggestions of "of overwork" and "at your desk," among others. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-karoshi-japanese-wor... (Which I not commentary on the article under discussion per se. Please don't infer such.) (Edited for clarity.)

That because it's statistically improbable and interesting, not probable.

"Common enough to have a word for it" and "probable" are not synonyms.

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#27

Post by theguppydream »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

The story has a link to the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s 2019 Dirty Dozen list of the most dangerous employers in the United States. Facebook is on that list, which surprised me at first, but then I guess it made sense: ● Facebook contracts with outside companies for low-paid moderators who remove objectionable content from its global social network ● “Every day, every minute… heads being cut…

The Verge had a long read on life of Facebook moderators that is worth a read if you have the time. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#28

Post by Cthulhu_ »

2rsf wrote: post #13

Totally coincidental collection of cases about > delayed medical attention to a warehouse worker during a cardiac arrest I'm not trying to say that Amazon warehouses are a good place to work for, but if you want to be taken seriously make an effort to bring meaningful numbers. How many workers work at Amazon's warehouses ? 6 out of 125,000 [0] seems like a rather low rate Were there any laws or regulations broken ? W…

What is expected from a nominal workplace is that they spot someone collapsing on the floor and give that top priority - I mean the article mentions a 20 minute response time, that's not normal for a busy warehouse. Vs a 2 minute response time for making a mistake.

Also, do you work or are you paid for by Amazon? It's known they pay people to say how great it is to work at Amazon on e.g. twitter - not dystopian at all. I get really paranoid whenever someone jumps to the defense (or in your case sows doubt about an accusation towards) of a major corporation which can afford to both halve workload and double wages of all of their employees without having to worry about their bottom line too much.

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#29

Post by Pfhreak »

burger_moon wrote: post #14

You know where there isn't outcry about this? In Seattle at the Amazon corp offices. There are regular company wide email threads (seattle-chatter@ among others) making jokes about the shitty working conditions of warehouse employees. Walking around the hallways and lunch areas you hear people making jokes about how awful it is. Nobody there cares. Change the type of free coffee in the lunch areas though and all hell…

I left corporate for similar reasons. Got tired of people cracking jokes about crying at their desks, poor treatment of workers, and an especially terrible policy restricting your side projects.

It's a shame, because there was so much I loved about the culture in AWS.

Re: The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor

#30

Post by gridlockd »

mapcars wrote: post #3

What is strange to me is that after a series of such incidents workers don't go out on protest or something, given this is happening in the US.

Despite all the bad press, an Amazon warehouse worker job is still one of the better jobs you can get, at that level of employability.
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