
Amazon hired private detectives to spy on injured worker - Jerry2
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/22/amaz-d22.html
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tcarn
Former Workers Comp claim examiner here.

Every Workers' compensation insurance company hires private investigators to
make sure the person is really injured and not working another job while
collecting. Sounds like the private investigative company overstepped their
bounds by physically assaulting the worker, but otherwise this is SOP.

Worth noting - Amazon has nothing to do with this. They simply pay premiums
for Sedgewick to administer the claims. The employer typically doesn't tell
the insurer to go after the workers, since in this case it is Sedgewick who's
footing the bill.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Worth noting - Amazon has nothing to do with this. They simply pay premiums
> for Sedgewick to administer the claims. The employer typically doesn 't tell
> the insurer to go after the workers, since in this case it is Sedgewick
> who's footing the bill._

The most anyone can really expect of them is that they consider other
providers, or hold their existing providers to a higher standard; and that is
almost certainly what they are going to do.

~~~
tcarn
I mean with all this publicity they will probably be switching providers or
sending in a complaint to Sedgewick, but they aren't micromanaging carpal
tunnel workers comp claims that make up 1/100000th of their revenue.

~~~
shawnz
When they were choosing a claims management provider, they surely took care to
choose one that aligns with their values. So this at least reflects poorly on
Amazon's choices at that time.

~~~
cperciva
You expect Amazon to interview insurance companies and reject any which answer
in the affirmative to "do you follow industry standards with regard to
investigating claims"?

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stickfigure
While the optics aren't great, I think this is the kind of thing we just have
to accept as a society without single-payer healthcare. There's a huge amount
of worker's comp fraud. Without some pushback in the system, there would be a
lot more. And worker's comp insurance is already very expensive (at least,
here in CA).

Also: We're getting just one side of the story here.

~~~
fzeroracer
Can you cite your claim that there is a huge amount of worker's comp fraud?
I'd like to see the data. Specifically the amount of claims that end up
fradulent.

~~~
stickfigure
Simply googling "workers comp fraud statistics", the first hit says 1-2% of
all claims are fraudulent.

You can detect the disease by looking for the antibodies. As the top commenter
(former examiner) pointed out, it's common for insurers to hire private
detectives to investigate claims. That's a large expense that they wouldn't
undertake without a good economic reason.

~~~
fzeroracer
First off, I am tired of people using the 'just Google it' argument. That is
not a replacement for citations when someone asks you to see data and I insist
that you and anyone using that argument stop. Google tailors searches based on
the user, location etc and without actual citations it is incredibly difficult
to assess the credibility of one's argument. If you had the time to Google
your own claim, then you had the opportunity to actually cite them in your
response.

And second, 1-2% is such a low amount according to your claims that I
absolutely do not believe it warrents invading someone's privacy and harassing
them, full stop.

~~~
stickfigure
I thought the general level of workers comp fraud was well understood, and it
doesn't take much googling to find it.

It sounds like the point of controversy is not sourcing, but the 1-2% figure.

That 1-2% figure is the level of fraud _given the current amount of privacy
invasion and harassment_ , including the story as posted. Less harassment,
more fraud; more harassment, less fraud. "full stop"

If you think 1-2% is insignificant, I don't know what to say. By comparison,
0.037% of card-present transactions were fraudulent in 2012. That number was
alarming enough it inspired switching all of our (USA) infrastructure to a
chip-based system, and even that is generally not thought adequate. 1-2% is a
large amount of fraud. If you have that amount of fraud on your merchant
account, banks will generally shut you down.

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usaphp
I don’t get this complains about amazon warehouse work. When I was a teenager
I used to work in alaska fish factory, with much much much stricter and harder
schedules and rules that the article describes. If you plan to work in a
warehouse - why are you surprized that you are required to lift heavy boxes
and work long hours. Maybe someone can enlighten me why is this so blown out
of proportion

~~~
Waterluvian
I don't get it either. In a past life I was sold to work in a factory in
London for basically no pay at 80 hours a week. It's like human standards of
living go up over time or something.

Joking aside, it's probably a good sign that what once was normal isn't.
Eventually robots will be doing all the lifting and we will look back and
shake our heads at how much intellectual capacity we had tied up lifting
boxes.

~~~
usaphp
I agree with that, but I don't understand why such a big focus is on Amazon.
It's not like they are the only ones with this type of working conditions.

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crescentfresh
> you are moving up and down the ladder picking 380 items per hour for 10
> hours

A picker is expected to pick an item every 9-10 seconds for 10 hours?

~~~
new_guy
Pretty much, one of the things about working at a place like that is you have
ZERO value as a human, your prior experience, educational level, none of that
matters.

You're expected to be a literal human robot, a mindless cog in a machine and
the picking rates reflect that. It's basically a living nightmare.

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cperciva
Why is it that every single article about abused Amazon warehouse workers
includes a GoFundMe link?

~~~
HarryHirsch
Because America. In some other countries it would be perceived as government
failure that needs fixing when an individual has to go beg for charity.

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mnm1
Another entire class of issues that would not exist if we had proper
healthcare in this country. I bet Amazon loves its home state of Washington
where the state does this dirty work for them at the expense of taxpayers,
leaving workers with no care unless they are willing to spend thousands and
years on worker's comp cases. That's despite being required by law to pay into
a fund that cannot be used. These entities should be ashamed of themselves and
we should be ashamed as a country for treating our hard working citizens this
way. Just goes to show you, hard work for others is far from a virtue but only
something to be done to keep from starving. In America anyway, hard work
mostly does not pay off.

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whoisjuan
Not saying that this is not true, but "World Socialist Website" is a website
with content created to promote socialist agenda on behalf of a group of
socialist parties.

Again, I'm not discrediting them, but it's good to know that there's an
implicit bias and agenda on this type of content.

Same goes for the majority of the mainstream media. I wish someone would build
a Chrome Extension that could reveal potential biases based on political
donations, affiliations, and known shareholders, in relation to the media
website you're visiting. It would add a lot of context and allow people to
have more criteria to evaluate the media they consume.

~~~
pizzazzaro
Thats interesting.

Most non-mainstream media makes you dive through the 501-C##'s papers, ICANN
whois records, etc to find out whose voice you're hearing. And then you gotta
dig like a shameless conspiracy theorist to find out what that means about
what you're reading.

Socialist media tells you who/what it is. Right there in the title.

Why the distrust for Workers' Rights?

~~~
smsm42
> Why the distrust for Workers' Rights?

As somebody who spent part of my life in a socialist country, there are
millions of reasons to distrust socialists. The Party's (under socialism, you
always know which one is The Party because all others are banned) press is
usually a non-ending stream of lies. Of course, the fact that all socialist
press I've had experience with were complete liars does not mean that this
one, which I never read before, is, but at least there's a cause for caution.

Especially as we didn't hear the other side at all - once, in the press, there
was a rule to try and get opposite's site take on the matter, but of course
the revolutionaries don't have much need for rules, do they?

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stefan_
This article has mysteriously vanished from the front page in record time.
Vouch for articles?

