
The outcry over deaths on Amazon's warehouse floor - xigency
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-warehouse-worker-deaths
======
burger_moon
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.

~~~
jschmitz28
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/@amazonemployeesclimatejustice/quotes-
of-...](https://medium.com/@amazonemployeesclimatejustice/quotes-of-
solidarity-for-striking-amazon-warehouse-workers-fe6e1c1e3c61)

~~~
claudeganon
Just to be clear - did you sign your name in support or are you a current
Amazon employee defending the company’s reputation in light of these deaths?

~~~
slowdog
How did you come to this conclusion... this is just flaming

~~~
netsharc
Didn't Amazon "encourage" warehouse workers to post tweets praising their
working conditions? (Who knows if they actually worked there though). Someone
found them and saw that the accounts had a pattern, and the tweets were eerily
similar as well.

With that in consideration, one has to ask whether they're also astroturfing
HN...

~~~
viridian
I know in the twitter thread that went viral, most of the "Amazon workers"
were actually satirical accounts, that kept ramping up the outrage.

The whole situation is shitty to be sure, and encouraging employees to defend
you from Twitter mobs is stupid, but holy shit did a lot of people get baited
hard during that whole ordeal.

------
blakesterz
The story has a link to the National Council for Occupational Safety and
Health’s 2019 Dirty Dozen list of the most dangerous employers in the United
States. Facebook is on that list, which surprised me at first, but then I
guess it made sense:

● Facebook contracts with outside companies for low-paid moderators who remove
objectionable content from its global social network

● “Every day, every minute… heads being cut off” Moderators review hundreds of
posts during a shift – including hate speech, pornography, and images of
suicides, murders and beheadings

● A former employee says: “I don’t think it’s possible to do the job and not
come out of it with some acute stress disorder or PTSD.”

I know nothing at all about this org:

[http://nationalcosh.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2019_Dir...](http://nationalcosh.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2019_Dirty_Dozen.pdf)

~~~
theguppydream
The Verge had a long read on life of Facebook moderators that is worth a read
if you have the time. [https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-
facebo...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-
content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona)

~~~
watt3rpig
I read it a while ago and wish I hadn’t. It was quite disturbing. Read at your
own risk.

~~~
colinyoung
I read it too. Made me think how ethical it is to continue using Facebook (and
its other major product, Instagram).

------
theguppydream
James Bloodworth's book Hired is a good companion piece. It covers what it's
like to work in an Amazon warehouse in the UK, among other low paid jobs. I'm
not sure if it was the tagline, but I think 'the last thing you'll buy on
Amazon' would be a decent slogan for the book.

He has a tendency to get a little purple with his prose, but if you can get
past that it's a good precis of low pay jobs.

Here's a link to the Goodreads page.
[https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/37780792-hired](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/37780792-hired)

------
mr_tristan
The weird thing to me was not just the delayed response by 20 minutes
(reportedly), but that everyone was forced to get back to work. It just
illuminates this very impersonal atmosphere bordering on the inhumane.

I'm wondering if this opens up Amazon to more regulatory scrutiny, or even
punitive settlements in the future. Something like this seems like actual
evidence for very negative patterns of behavior.

This seems like a new kind of "hostile workplace environment" \- one where
your workplace will ignore your medical needs if an accident occurs. I just
wonder if this is just some older pattern that's repeating itself, it's just
not widely known.

------
watt3rpig
I had a friend who worked as a software engineer at a big retail company that
wasn’t Amazon. They had a tour at a distribution center. The place was a death
trap. He got a bad concussion by walking into a low ceiling. No hard hats, no
warning about it nothing.

------
kiterunner2346
I've taken Amazon's warehouse guided tours several times The surprise was that
there is NO surprise: the entire process is merely the application of current
technologies in warehousing and distribution, with humans in the few niches
where machines are not quite "there" yet. in the places where humans are
involved, there's just enough workspace so that, say, once Amazon develops a
proper "binning" robot, the human can be fired and a machine rolled in to
replace him/her.

Place was nicely put together though: all the screws and bolts tight, racks
and tracks level and properly aligned, sensors everywhere on the production
line ready to alert of any problem. So kudos to the guys and gals who put it
together and lined it up! Looks like the U.S. Army put it together (well,
actually, if the Army did it, it would be use better parts and be more
sturdily constructed).

As for what it does, nothing there of interest to high tech.

------
2rsf
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...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse-
fulfillment-centers-productivity-firing-terminations)

~~~
Cthulhu_
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 all.
I get really paranoid whenever someone jumps to the defense (or in your case
sows doubt about an accusation towards) of a major corporation which can
afford to both halve workload and double wages of all of their employees
without having to worry about their bottom line too much.

~~~
GarrisonPrime
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 doesn’t make you a reliable
source of opinion to flat-out say you don’t believe anything made in defense
of your predetermined villains.

Amazon barely makes any profit, you may have heard. It’s completely wrong to
claim they could halve the work and double the wages. Such assertions make you
come across as delusional and biased.

~~~
tareqak
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.

~~~
Nasrudith
It in no way excuses any negligence but the likely reason for that is
frequency of events and how attention is structured in designs and processes.
There are /far/ more cases of hurried workers misfiling items than having
heart attacks. Algorithmic assistance would lack the events to recognize and
humans would lack the attention to surveil everything.

They certainly should do better and make appropriate changes to practices but
at that scale it would require something systemic by definition whether it is
adding a tighter employee welfare patrols or say emergency fall detection
gadgets that ask if they are okay and if not responded to within a certain
time call for aid or similar.

------
londons_explore
Amazon has 250,000 hourly employees in the USA?

Can it really take nearly 0.1% of the US workforce just to deliver online
goods? And presumably that's an under-estimate, because it doesn't include
most courier work.

I was sort of hoping that every item I order on amazon has only perhaps 30
seconds of human time going into it... Assuming I order 3 items/week, and am
typical of US citizens, amazon ought to be able to serve everyone with 130k
employees.

~~~
mrfredward
30 seconds to grab an item off a shelf in a huge warehouse, wrap it, put put
in a box, tape the box shut, print and attach a label, load it on a truck, and
complete all the required tracking steps? And we still haven't accounted for
managing all these people, cleaning the warehouse, or even stocking the
shelves.

Edit: CNN says it takes a minute of human labor as of 2016
([https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/06/technology/amazon-
warehouse...](https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/06/technology/amazon-warehouse-
robots/index.html)). And that's shelf to delivery truck, so there is plenty
more in that process that it leaves out.

~~~
londons_explore
I'm guessing most of those steps will be automated, or done in bulk, therefore
only taking 1 or 2 seconds of actual human time.

For example, sticking labels on a box could be entirely automated, with the
only time use being 30 minutes to replace the printer once every million
labels when it wears out.

~~~
mrfredward
Sure, lots of it is automated. There has to be a fantastic level of automation
to achieve that 1 minute per order.

Amazon is one of the most brutally efficient operations in world history. We
read every week about workers afraid to take bathroom breaks, and according to
the article here workers seem too busy to notice their coworkers dropping dead
of heart attacks. The sentiment of us here at our keyboards saying "wow, I
can't believe it takes more than 30 seconds to put my order in a box" seems
really wrong.

------
mapcars
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.

~~~
foxhop
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 humans.

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

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

------
jrowley
Amazon is the Foxconn of America (although Foxconn now has operations in the
US too)

------
onetimemanytime
>> _Amazon said it had responded to Foister’s collapse “within minutes”._

Yeah, in just 45784512 minutes. Actually less, but 20 minutes is not minutes
when it comes to heart attacks.

------
Merrill
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.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
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...](http://nationalcosh.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2019_Dirty_Dozen.pdf)

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

~~~
gridlockd
> 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, 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.

That sounds like medical malpractice, should be investigated on its own
merits.

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

Yes, but also don't declare it a scandal before the facts are on the table.

[1]
[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _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.

~~~
gridlockd
> One might reasonably assume that an article about workplace deaths isn't
> counting employees who slipped in the shower at home.

I disagree. With these kinds of sources, you can't reasonably assume this.

> 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.

You're right, I should have paid more attention, because those deaths aren't
Amazon employees _at all_ and _none_ of them are warehouse workers:

 _\- Andrew Lindsayand 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 Dauntfell 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 Askaand Sean Archuletadied 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._

None of these incidents hint at negligence on the part of Amazon.

This also explains why over the period of several years, Amazon workplace
fatalities were well below average: They counted those properly. Working at
Amazon is actually very safe, statistically speaking.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _those deaths aren 't Amazon employees at all_

> _None of these incidents hint at negligence on the part of Amazon._

Whether their paycheck is signed by Amazon directly or through a contracting
service is irrelevant. Amazon is responsible for the firms it hires to run its
operations, and the rules and standards it requires them to meet. If Amazon
contractors are chronically negligent, then Amazon is negligent.

~~~
gridlockd
> Amazon is responsible for the firms it hires to run its operations, and the
> rules and standards it requires them to meet.

I don't disagree that Amazon has _some_ responsibility here, but within
reason. No evidence has been presented that Amazon has been neglectful.
Accidents happen even in the safest of environments, but you also can't expect
Amazon (or any other company) hiring a contractor to supervise them 100% of
the time. It can't work that way.

> If Amazon contractors are chronically negligent, then Amazon is negligent.

Again, there is no known indicator that Amazon was being negligent in these
cases, otherwise that would've been put forth. Whether or not such indicators
will turn up during investigation, Amazon is already on that list. That's
plain dishonesty.

------
gridlockd
> 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...](http://nationalcosh.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2019_Dirty_Dozen.pdf)

In five out of these twelve, nobody actually died.

Those may be shitty jobs/companies, but they're not exceptionally dangerous -
especially not Amazon.

This is spitting in the face of people who actually have dangerous jobs with
exceptional risks:

[https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-
dangerou...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangerous-
jobs-us-where-fatal-injuries-happen-most-often/38832907/)

