Amazon hid its safety crisis
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Amazon hid its safety crisis
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Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#2 > The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard.
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#3> The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard. This seems extraordinarily high. I wouldn't accept that risk. Makes me all the happier that I closed my Amazon account.
I wonder if Amazon really skews that industry standard so they might even have way more than double the injuries of other warehouses
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#4> The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common kind of warehouse, workers called pickers – who previously had to grab and scan about 100 items an hour – were expected to hit rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic fulfillment centers.
The gist of the message above. It seems that robots made the process so efficient that workers were suffering from repetitive motion injuries.
It also would seemed to be a matter of time that the packing/picking will be fully replaced by robots. At which time Amazon will no longer have a safety issue, but an entire separate political issue.
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#5> The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common kind of warehouse, workers called pickers – who previously had to grab and scan about 100 items an hour – were expected to hit rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic ful…
They'd get rid of their union 'problems' and face a whole other crisis. But that wouldn't really stop Amazon and I'm sure bad PR isn't as expensive as having to pay out workers who got injured because they couldn't keep up with 'supreme' robotic workers.
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#6> The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard. This seems extraordinarily high. I wouldn't accept that risk. Makes me all the happier that I closed my Amazon account.
The article defined serious injury as
> those requiring days off or job restrictions.
Meanwhile OSHA defined serious injury here: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1993-...
Exerpt:
> 1 Impairment of the body in which part of the body is made functionally useless or is substantially reduced in efficiency on or off the job. Such impairment may be permanent or temporary, chronic or acute. Injuries involving such impairment would usually require treatment by a medical doctor. Examples of injuries which constitute such harm include:
a Amputation (loss of all or part of a bodily appendage which includes the loss of bone).
b Concussion.
c Crushing (internal, even through skin surface may be intact).
d Fracture (simple or compound).
e Burns or scald, including electric and chemical burns.
f Cut, laceration, or puncture involving significant bleeding and/or requiring suturing.
The differences in standards (which the article does mention in passing, but in no details) is a potential differentiator.
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#7Amazon's abysmal safety standards are no secret. There's an expose about them every six months. So far nobody with the power to change anything cares. What would it take to get actual change? Even politicians who hate Amazon don't seem to care about their workers.
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#8> The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common kind of warehouse, workers called pickers – who previously had to grab and scan about 100 items an hour – were expected to hit rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic ful…
The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled
Here's an old Kiva Robotics video that shows how picking works.[1] It's an utterly mindless job. An automated laser pointer points to the bin from which to take an object. A lighted button shows which box to put it in. A new bin then moves into position, and this goes on. Training time required is about 30 seconds. Amazon liked the system and bought Kiva. The company, not just the system.
So anyone with basic eye-hand coordination can do picking, computers check that it's done right, there's no future in the job, and Amazon is trying to automate the picking process anyway. Classic assembly-line job.
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#9> The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard. This seems extraordinarily high. I wouldn't accept that risk. Makes me all the happier that I closed my Amazon account.
The article defined serious injury as > those requiring days off or job restrictions. Meanwhile OSHA defined serious injury here: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1993-... Exerpt: > 1 Impairment of the body in which part of the body is made functionally useless or is substantially reduced in efficiency on or off the job. Such impairment may be permanent or temporary, chronic or acute. Injuries i…
There could be a mismatch with the national statistics, but the Amazon data has rates by year and warehouse type so the upward trend is still bad. I know at the factory/distribution center I worked at once upon a time, we tracked OSHA recordables / hour.
Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis
#10> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads.
And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem.
I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at this point. And I'd say the overwhelming evidence of them lying about safety reports is a pretty strong indicator of how their actions don't match their words.
This obsession with growth is metaphorically cancer. It has to grow no matter what, until the once-healthy host has long since died and all that's left is an enormous tumor.