
After deaths, Amazon lands on list of most dangerous employers - nsstring96
https://futurism.com/deaths-amazon-list-most-dangerous-employers
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cpncrunch
Terrible article devoid of useful facts. Not that I'm defending amazon...it
sounds like a terrible place to work. However, none of these deaths seems to
be Amazon's fault. From the "dirty dozen":

● Andrew Lindsay and Israel Espana Argote, contract workers, died when the
wall of an Amazon warehouse collapsed during a severe storm in Baltimore in
November 2018.

● Brien James Daunt fell to his death during construction of an Amazon
warehouse in Oildale, CA in January 2019. Falls from a height are a well-known
– and preventable – hazard in the construction industry, with long-established
protocols to reduce risks. CalOSHA is investigating the incident.

● Aviators Ricky Blakely, Conrad Jules Aska and Sean Archuleta died in
February when an Air Atlas plane, carrying cargo for Amazon, crashed into
Trinity Bay, southeast of Texas. Blakely and Aska worked for Air Atlas and
were members of the Airline Professional Association (APA), Teamsters Local
224\. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the
incident.

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cactus2093
Out of curiousity I looked up some rough numbers (which is clearly far beyond
what either this article or this dirty dozen organization were willing to do).
They name 7 deaths related to amazon, but 3 were in a plane crash and one was
during construction on a warehouse, both of which Amazon would have very
little to do with and were almost certainly not employees of AMazon. So really
it's 3 deaths, out of a workforce of about 650,000 which is about 0.375% of
the entire US workforce. The list highlights that there were 5,100 workplaces
deaths total in 2018, so if they matched the averages then Amazon would have
19 deaths per year. Instead they have 3 deaths over the past 2 years (since
November 2018).

Obviously any such deaths are a tragedy, but by the numbers there are clearly
much more dangerous jobs in the US than being an Amazon worker.

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GhostVII
I think this is one of the most misleading articles I have seen on the front
page of hacker news. First of all, being on OSHA's "dirty dozen" does not
imply you are one of the most dangerous workplaces. And the report this
article is based on cited 6 deaths in the past year - 3 from an airplane
accident, 1 from construction, and 2 when a warehouse wall collapsed. 6 deaths
in a year is very few at Amazon scale, especially when they are counting
people who aren't actually employed by Amazon directly. And I don't think any
of those deaths, except maybe the last two, can be attributed to Amazon.

~~~
sct202
It's not even OSHA's list it's just a nonprofit with a name that is strikingly
similar to ones run by the government.

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sct202
So I hate defending Amazon, but the article cites the "National Council for
Occupational Safety and Health" which is not affiliated with the government
despite having a name very similar to the CDC's National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health. The list also seems pretty subjective for what
qualifies as the most dangerous.

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papln
Headline is deceptive. There is no objective metric of "most dangerous" here.
The list is a list of "employers that an activist group wants to make noise
about."

Does Amazon have problems to address? Absolutely. Is it "most dangerous"?
Absolutely not.

It's farcical to claim that Amazon is a top-12 most-dangerous place to work.

Here's a real list:

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/work...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01/09/workplace-
fatalities-25-most-dangerous-jobs-america/1002500001/)

#1 Logging: 100 per 100K annual death rate.

#13 Construction labor: 25 per 100K

#25 HVAC 8 per 100K

That's over dozen _job types_ , encompassing many more _employers_.

Amazon warehouse: 10 per 100K+: ~10 deaths / 100,000+ warehouse employees (I
can't find a clear number of full-time-equivalent, but Time says "300K
employees", World Socialists say 125K warehouse workers in 2017)

USA unintentional injury death rate: 50 per 100K

USA heart attack death rate: 100+ per 100K

USA heart disease death rate, age 45-64: 150 per 100K

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_05-508.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_05-508.pdf)

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pliny
>Amazon’s high productivity quotas forces workers to pee in bottles to avoid
bathroom breaks and risk injury working with the automated machines and robots
— one of which sent 24 workers to the hospital after spraying them with
concentrated bear repellent — which are stripping away human jobs and leaving
those who are left in danger.

These jobs are difficult and dangerous and pay poorly and under no
circumstances should a human be deprived of this terrible birthright.

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pmoriarty
I'm surprised there isn't more consumer action, such as boycotts, against
Amazon.

I guess consumers are either ignorant of how crappy an employer Amazon is or
care more about getting their cheap goods than about the welfare of Amazon
workers.

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ptah
wow, they are by far the worst on the list

