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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

#71

Post by curryst »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #34
gridlockd wrote: post #24

> 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 shi…

I'll repeat my question I did to another one - are you employed by or paid by Amazon? "nobody died" is not good enough. Whataboutism is not a good counter-argument.

This is not whataboutism. Whataboutism involves failing to address the argument, and instead redirecting to a supposedly worse situation.

The parent comment has addressed the argument; in 5 of the 12 no one died. That makes the list farcical for a supposed "top most dangerous" list. The rest of the article may be valid. Personally, I don't know. I don't know anything about the layout of the inside of those warehouses, or how common it would be for a worker to go 20 minutes without seeing someone else.

I don't fully understand putting the blame on Amazon. If someone saw him collapse and ignored it, sure. I'm fairly doubtful that's what occurred, it would take an extreme level of callousness from several people to have done that. There's no info around what he was doing when he collapsed; everyone seems to assume he was in the exact same spot as that anecdote where management noticed a mistake in 2 minutes. Does it seem impossible that he felt light headed and was heading towards that AmCare facility when he lost consciousness? Or between stations or something?

This just doesn't seem that foreign to me. Lots of people work in jobs where they could conceivably pass out for 20 minutes without anyone noticing. Security workers on patrol, bartenders during slow shifts, home lawncare people, home cleaning people (if they clean while you're gone).

I'm not arguing that the working conditions at Amazon are anything other than abysmal, but this doesn't seem like a legitimate reason to be angry at Amazon.

The bit about AmCare not sending him to the hospital when he complained of chest pains and a headache is very damning, though. I'm curious if that opens them up to liability. I was under the impression that as soon as someone says the words "chest pain" you're supposed to call 911 and get them an ambulance.

I am not employed by or paid by Amazon.

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

#72

Post by claudeganon »

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.

While it’s always a difficult moral quandary to sort out the ethics of a given employer, there are plenty of opportunities in the software world that won’t make you complicit in treating working class people the way that Amazon does:

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-ver...

https://nypost.com/2018/04/16/amazon-warehouse-workers-pee-i...

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

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-...

https://www.ft.com/content/b0c22a35-f553-39ec-8b89-d5986d02b...

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

#73

Post by adossi »

stakecounter wrote: post #38
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've been subscribed to that mailing list for about five years and I've never seen anybody making jokes about bad warehouse working conditions. Sometimes it gets brought up to let someone know that overcrowded bathrooms or "bad coffee" aren't so bad in relative terms. Also, some people care enough to sign their names next to quotes in support of warehouse worker strikes: https://medium.com/@amazonemployeesclimatejust…

That was back in July. I'm genuinely curious to know how many of those employees that showed solidarity are still employed by Amazon today?

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

#74

Post by krapp »

foxhop wrote: post #10
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.

Amazon actively, proactively, and reactively busts all forms of labor organization, including unions. Hourly wage workers do not have the time, or runway to protest. The deaths are only witnessed by a handful of workers, as their zones are spread very far out in these enormous warehouses. Word of mouth flows very slowly as a result. During their shifts, workers are lonely and interact with more robots than other huma…

>During their shifts, workers are lonely and interact with more robots than other humans.

To be fair, some of us prefer it that way.

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

#75

Post by SolaceQuantum »

gridlockd wrote: post #66
thedaemon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No.

Okay, then why aren't all these workers quitting their hated jobs in droves? Why would they care if they get fired, when they can just get another, even better job? If there were better jobs readily available to them, then Amazon would have no power over these workers.

"Why would they care if they get fired, when they can just get another, even better job?"

Have you considered... they cannot get an 'even better job'? I highly recommend reading "Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy". It details the lives of people working at TaskRabbit, Uber, AirBnB, and KitchenSurfing. It might also help explain the choices of why people are taking 'bad work' (that there isn't 'better work'.)

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

#76

Post by krapp »

midgetjones wrote: post #37
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

a lot of 70-90 year-olds working in amazon warehouses you think?

I can only speak in the case of one warehouse, but yes - I've seen a lot of middle-aged people working there.

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

#77

Post by tareqak »

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #44
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

Considering how many blind spots their warehouses must have, and how rarely many of the isles might be visited, I don’t think any special maleficence or irresponsibility is required for some down person to be missed for a while. Not saying they shouldn’t be fixing this problem, just that it seems like a problem even the most perfectly humane company could easily have. And you might want to check your paranoia. It doe…

From the article:

> “How can you not see a 6ft3in man laying on the ground and not help him within 20 minutes? A couple of days before, he put the wrong product in the wrong bin and within two minutes management saw it on camera and came down to talk to him about it,” Edward Foister said.

Amazon management was able to identify via a camera that the deceased individual previously put an item into the wrong bin and act within two minutes to speak to him about the mistake. Why can’t Amazon management use a security camera to detect the same individual laying on the ground and get to him in two minutes?

Yes, this quote is from that of the deceased individual’s brother, but Amazon could easily confirm, or refute this account.

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

#78

Post by krapp »

zepto wrote: post #33
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I didn’t realize Amazon hires the elderly and people in hospital.

Amazon will hire anyone who can pass a drug test and physically handle the work for at least a day.

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

#79

Post by midgetjones »

krapp wrote: post #76
midgetjones wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a lot of 70-90 year-olds working in amazon warehouses you think?

I can only speak in the case of one warehouse, but yes - I've seen a lot of middle-aged people working there.

70-90 is middle-aged now?

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

#80

Post by PhasmaFelis »

gridlockd wrote: post #47
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Six deaths in as many months is something else. It says "Six worker deaths in seven months; 13 deaths since 2013." It doesn't go into any detail as to whether these workers actually died on the job . Six out of ~125,000 warehouse workers in one year would be double the average[1] (over all professions), but 13 out of ~100,000 over six years would be quite low. > A week before Billy Foister died of a heart attack, h…

> It says "Six worker deaths in seven months; 13 deaths since 2013." It doesn't go into any detail as to whether these workers actually died on the job.

One might reasonably assume that an article about workplace deaths isn't counting employees who slipped in the shower at home. But we don't have to assume: the linked Dirty Dozen list published in April 2019 says "Six workers have died at U.S. Amazon facilities or operations since November 2018." Six on-the-job deaths in six months, November to April. Not all of them were in warehouses, but all of them were preventable.

It also mentions (direct quotes):

* a high incidence of suicide attempts

* workers urinating in bottles because they are afraid to take breaks

* workers left without resources or income after on-the-job injuries

* the company treated illness as a “misdemeanor,” assigning a point that could have led to dismissal when [an undercover investigator] took a sick day

This is not a few bad apples. This is systematic.

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