The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor • Hacker News Board

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

#11

Post by PhasmaFelis » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

Merrill wrote: post #5

A few cubes away from me one of our guys put his head down on his arms on his work surface. No one noticed, but he died. The guys holding a meeting in the cube across the aisle from him felt bad about it, but they thought he was taking a nap. Any large employer will have people die on the job.

An occasional random death at work is statistically inevitable. Six deaths in as many months is something else.

A week before Billy Foister died of a heart attack, he went to the onsite clinic complaining of chest pains. They said he was dehydrated and told him to drink some water and go back to work. The article links to the NCOSH Dirty Dozen report, which describes a well-documented history of Amazon mistreating sick and injured employees. http://nationalcosh.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2019_Dir...

Don't write this off as a series of unfortunate coincidences.

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

#12

Post by macintux » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

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.

Between the costs of health care and the general indebtedness of many, risking your job in that way is a tough sell, especially since it would only be effective in large numbers.

I also suspect that if you’re working in a hellish warehouse, it’s probably more of act of desperation than a career choice.

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

#13

Post by 2rsf » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

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 ?

What is expected from a nominal workplace before and when a worker suffers from a heart condition ?

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse...

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

#14

Post by burger_moon » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

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 breaks loose.

Quitting that company was such a relief to myself, and cutting ties with everything Amazon was at least important to me. I cannot morally support a company that treats their employees in such a way.

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

#15

Post by stevespang » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

Employee Billy Foister suffers a heart attack, is left laying on the floor 20 minutes before Amazon personnel respond ? and it's all on video ?

I smell the lawyers and a jury trial, but the settlement will just be a mere "write off" for Bezos . . . .

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

#16

Post by ct0 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

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…

Did you quit an amazon corporate position or a warehouse position? I'm sure the two are very very different so I would be impressed if you left the corporate position because of warehouse chatter. More recently I have been considering applying to a corporate position but would hate to feel the same way in a couple of years there.

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

#17

Post by tomatotomato37 » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #11

Merrill wrote: post #5

A few cubes away from me one of our guys put his head down on his arms on his work surface. No one noticed, but he died. The guys holding a meeting in the cube across the aisle from him felt bad about it, but they thought he was taking a nap. Any large employer will have people die on the job.

An occasional random death at work is statistically inevitable. Six deaths in as many months is something else. A week before Billy Foister died of a heart attack, he went to the onsite clinic complaining of chest pains. They said he was dehydrated and told him to drink some water and go back to work. The article links to the NCOSH Dirty Dozen report, which describes a well-documented history of Amazon mistreating si…

Amazon has more employees than the state of Vermont's population, which last year had an average death rate of 500 per month. If anything this shows that working for Amazon is good for your health

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

#18

Post by makomk » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

x3ro wrote: post #6

Merrill wrote: post #5

A few cubes away from me one of our guys put his head down on his arms on his work surface. No one noticed, but he died. The guys holding a meeting in the cube across the aisle from him felt bad about it, but they thought he was taking a nap. Any large employer will have people die on the job.

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?

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

#19

Post by jrockway » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

ct0 wrote: post #16

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…

Did you quit an amazon corporate position or a warehouse position? I'm sure the two are very very different so I would be impressed if you left the corporate position because of warehouse chatter. More recently I have been considering applying to a corporate position but would hate to feel the same way in a couple of years there.

I am guessing that the warehouse workers don't read "seattle-chatter" mailing lists or have lunch-area coffee to complain about.

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

#20

Post by kube-system » Fri, Oct 18, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #8

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That list is totally farcical. There are all sorts of companies (most of them small because you can't do this kind of thing at scale without being sued) that put their employees in actually dangerous situations. There are nursing homes and hospitals that make the untrained janitor clean up bodily fluids (more than just your normal crap on the bathroom wall). There are construction operations where all sorts of safety…

I agree that the actual list is not purely based on risk of serious injuries. It’s a list to cover the scope of OSHA issues which means it’s less arbitrary than you might think. Anyway, it has some interesting info. “903 Latinx workers died on the job in 2017 representing a 15 percent increase since 2012, and 17 percent of all U.S. fatalities from workplace trauma.”

I think that supports the above point. The dozen companies on the list only account for a few of that 903.

As the linked document mentions, there are very few OSHA inspectors. You’re very unlikely to have any sort of real OSHA enforcement at a small business in the US.

At a large employer, they often at least recognize and attempt to follow safety regulations. At a small business it is not at all uncommon for management to not care or even be aware that regulations exist.

Looking back at my years at a warehouse run by a small business, I didn’t realize how dangerous the things were that I was doing at the time, but pretty much every task I had involved an OSHA violation. It was just the way things worked, and it wasn’t any different than any other nearby businesses.