Indiana Manipulated Report On Amazon Worker's Death To Lure HQ2, Report Says (indystar.com) 48
An anonymous reader quotes a report produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting: When an Amazon worker was killed by a forklift in a Plainfield warehouse in 2017, the state of Indiana's investigator found the company was at fault. The state cited Amazon for four major safety violations and fined it $28,000. But an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found that, as Gov. Eric Holcomb sought to lure Amazon's HQ2 to Indiana, state labor officials quietly absolved Amazon of responsibility. After Amazon appealed, they deleted every fine that had been levied and accepted the company's argument -- that the Amazon worker was to blame.
The investigator on the case, John Stallone, had arrived at the warehouse a day after 59-year-old Phillip Lee Terry was crushed to death. He was so troubled by the pushback he was getting from higher-ups that he secretly recorded his boss, Indiana OSHA Director Julie Alexander, as she counseled the company on how to lessen the fine. He said pressure to back off came from as high up as the governor's mansion. The governor's office and Indiana labor officials declined interviews. In statements, they both called Stallone's account false. Stallone said Indiana Labor Commissioner Rick Ruble told him to back off on the Amazon case -- or resign. Stallone went on to quit and report the incident to a federal OSHA official.
"Stallone told the federal official that 'someone higher than Director Alexander' wanted the Amazon case to go away 'in the hopes it would keep Indianapolis in the running for their new HQ location,'" reports Reveal. "The governor's office denied the meeting with Stallone and the labor commissioner took place, with press secretary Rachel Hoffmeyer writing, 'The Governor never gets involved in Department of Labor cases.'"
A year after Terry's death when Indianapolis was one of 20 finalists for the Amazon headquarters deal, Indiana officials quietly signed an agreement with Amazon to delete all the safety citations and fees. "The agreement said Amazon had met the requirements of an 'unpreventable employee misconduct defense,'" reports Reveal. "The official record now essentially blames Terry for his own death." Ultimately, Amazon ended up choosing Arlington for its second headquarters.
The investigator on the case, John Stallone, had arrived at the warehouse a day after 59-year-old Phillip Lee Terry was crushed to death. He was so troubled by the pushback he was getting from higher-ups that he secretly recorded his boss, Indiana OSHA Director Julie Alexander, as she counseled the company on how to lessen the fine. He said pressure to back off came from as high up as the governor's mansion. The governor's office and Indiana labor officials declined interviews. In statements, they both called Stallone's account false. Stallone said Indiana Labor Commissioner Rick Ruble told him to back off on the Amazon case -- or resign. Stallone went on to quit and report the incident to a federal OSHA official.
"Stallone told the federal official that 'someone higher than Director Alexander' wanted the Amazon case to go away 'in the hopes it would keep Indianapolis in the running for their new HQ location,'" reports Reveal. "The governor's office denied the meeting with Stallone and the labor commissioner took place, with press secretary Rachel Hoffmeyer writing, 'The Governor never gets involved in Department of Labor cases.'"
A year after Terry's death when Indianapolis was one of 20 finalists for the Amazon headquarters deal, Indiana officials quietly signed an agreement with Amazon to delete all the safety citations and fees. "The agreement said Amazon had met the requirements of an 'unpreventable employee misconduct defense,'" reports Reveal. "The official record now essentially blames Terry for his own death." Ultimately, Amazon ended up choosing Arlington for its second headquarters.
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It's from Reveal, so probably not. They're basically CommonDreams dressed up as NPR.
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I have listened to Reveal regularly for years and have never heard of CommonDreams. I had to look that up.
I am not seeing any connection between the two. Can you elaborate on your claim?
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Wow, if this story is true... Wow.
Big enough wads of cash have always made crimes go away.
Corporation, n.: (Score:5, Insightful)
An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Re:Corporation, n.: (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of individual responsibility, here's what the anti-Amazon article describes as having happened:
Sure, Amazon could've double-triple-checked that the guy knew how to do his job properly, but the most basic of common sense safety rules for anyone working on heavy machinery (car, etc...) is to not be working underneath it without something setup to block it from crushing you. The fact that the pole designed specifically for that was found a few feet away means it was certainly available to the guy doing the work. No one likes to blame someone for their own death, but failing to take the simplest of safety precautions when the equipment to do so is sitting right there is pretty suggestive, especially when there is no one else around and it's all caught on video.
It's a tragedy, it sucks for his adult son that he died, but the guy just wasn't thinking. Saying he wasn't adequately trained is an excuse for the pilot of 747 when they can't deal with a rare emergency. It's not an excuse for crawling under a heavy object and torquing on it with a wrench without propping something under it. You might be able to say better training might have helped, but it's not the direct cause of the accident, it's an attempt to avoid future accidents by doing whatever you can to improve things.
It's not like the guy didn't know how to use the pole. The Indiana Labor Department said "it couldn’t prove Amazon should have known Terry wouldn’t properly prop up the forklift. Labor Department spokesperson Stephanie McFarland said Amazon produced proof that Terry was properly trained, including a video of Terry handling the equipment the right way another time."
Re:Corporation, n.: (Score:5, Informative)
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It's Reveal. They have basically no journalistic standards. They'll release pretty much any claim (spoken by a soothing voice with relaxing music in the intermission, to make it sound legit), so long as it can serve the purposes of promoting a unionization drive at a given location or whatnot. And they never issue retractions when called out on blatant falsehoods.
Also, was he under pressure to get done faster (Score:2)
Safety isn't just about procedures, it's about making those procedures practical. Companies aren't allowed to set up all the safety gear for CYA and then punish the workers for using that gear. Or at least they're not supposed to be...
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So, exactly the sort of thing that happens when under-trained workers are placed under too much time pressure and encouraged to take shortcuts.
Meanwhile, Amazon was going to be fined $28,000 for this before it hiked it's skirt up suggestively and batted it's eyelashes at state officials.
Re: Corporation, n.: (Score:2)
To be honest, OHSA, OCR, FDA, FCC and a bunch of other federal bureaus with investigative arms that are free from any due process do like to simply send fines and a lot of companies pay because it's cheaper than a lawyer even if you know you're not in the wrong.
They do indeed give you all sorts of recommendations to lower the fines, it makes everyone from middle management up to the board look like good negotiators and thus internally the pressure to just "accept" the fine becomes greater.
I've just been inv
Re:Corporation, n.: (Score:5, Informative)
A Pole?
I worked on fork trucks back in the day (further back than I truly want to recall) You never work under the blade carriage in a lifted position. Especially LOADED. So I assume the 1200 pound "piece of equipment" refers to the carriage assembly and not an actual loaded lift, which would be off the charts stupid.
In fact only one procedure is performed with the mast raised. And then only a couple of inches. Checking the lift chain tension to be sure it is equal.
From a typical repair manual: (Toyota in this case)
From that description this sounds like the repair he was doing. If he was doing any of the repairs that the carriage gets in the way of then the proper procedure is to use a vehicle lift, repair pit or remove the carriage.
If it were stuck in a lifted position against a shelf due to a hydraulic blow out, you would back it out slightly and then support the carriage with a second lift lowering it with the second lift. Although the most likely scenario there is you notice it only when you clear the shelf and it comes crashing down as with no pressure it can't stay up. Then you quietly go to the restroom to scrape the shit out of your pants.
Of course this is an emergency situation and not maintenance.
But you wouldn't ever get under it except with it on a vehicle lift that has safeties to prevent it suddenly falling. This is a clear violation of safety regulations. Not to mention a pole! Any shop doing that type of hillbilly repair should of been closed on the spot. Perhaps that was the nature of the original blame being placed on Amazon?
Re: Corporation, n.: (Score:2)
And he would still be alive. Which do you value more?
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No, he would have been written up if he didn't do it and was observed by a supervisor. A warehouse full of equipment moving around, some of it autonomously, is a dangerous place. If they were making people take shortcuts to save the 30 seconds it would have taken to set the jack in place then you'd see the coroner parked outside every day.
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His was the second serious incident that month at that facility.
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Some equipment seems to have specifically engineered locking hardware for the purpose of keeping moving parts aloft during maintenance. I was recently on a ranch where there was some big piece of equipment, IIRC it was a CASE front loader, which had integrated bars for this purpose, with instructions on using them on stickers on the machine itself. You raised the hydraulics, took out a big pin that holds the bars in place, swing them up until they are in place, put the pin in again, and then lower the hydra
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Good grief. If I'm going to do something enormously stupid I at least call someone over to watch so that they can call 911 if it backfires on me, but this is beyond even my level of stupid.
The idea that places like Indianapolis, Cleveland, or Saskatchewan were ever actually in the running for HQ2 has always struck me as absurd. Amazon wanted the place to attract the best and brightest. Now imagine this hiring interaction.
"Just calling you to tell you that you have the position, and can start as soon as y
Re: Corporation, n.: (Score:1)
Re: Corporation, n.: (Score:2)
You might, but my understanding is that there were cameras, so the events wouldn't be that much in doubt.
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here, let me fix that for you ...
An disingenuousness device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
This is called State Capture (Score:5, Insightful)
It's something normally seen in former Soviet Bloc failed-states, and African nations with dysfunctional oligarchies.
The fact that it's happening here is a sign that something is extremely broken.
Re:This is called State Capture (Score:5, Interesting)
It's happening all over the country. One of my clients had an OSHA death brushed under the rug by Cal-OSHA, despite his Chinese death machine with no barriers, interlocks, Normally Open Estops (Should be Normally Closed) and just outright dangerous practices through out the plant. Meanwhile, I get OSHA inspectors up the wazoo every month because I'm easy, clean, with zero accidents and my neighbor gets to run his plant full of illegal immigrants with lousy crap for safety and accidents once a month (Finger loss, hands cut up, etc).
I don't find it comforting that this is happening as we're losing our integrity and fall to African tier government and service.
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Here we see you projecting yourself onto something and seeing something that isn't there.
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No it's definitely racist. Let me help you understand.
"Chinese death machine" - Calling the machine specifically Chinese and giving it heavy negative connotations, is saying that Chinese people are why it's a death machine.
"my neighbor gets to run his plant full of illegal immigrants with lousy crap for safety and accidents once a month (Finger loss, hands cut up, etc)."
This person is jealous that they can't have a plant full of illegal immigrants. However they also think negatively towards these immigrants
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Yeah, right. This is the first time someone has done anything in the US to help a corporation. Derp.
I am ashamed to be an Indianapolitan (Score:4, Interesting)
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Phew (Score:2)
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Amazon was really sweating there over that fine, they almost had to close shop.
Ha, yeah, my thought exactly. So some disgruntled guy claims that a huge conspiracy was made to cover up a (tiny) $28,000 fine in order to make Amazon happy. I doubt Jeff Bezos is even able to read numbers with so few zeroes. Sure politicians are corrupt, but I doubt the governor would put so much effort into such a relatively small act of conspiracy.
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If the case is as reported above, and not just some standard appeals process, I doubt the money was even mentioned. Amazon would only have wanted the verdict of guilt reversed so that they could claim a clean safety record.
Having that clean record can be worth much more in the long run if any similar cases come to light. Being able to legally claim "honestly Judge, this is the first time this has ever happened in one of our facilities" can be worth millions in the right civil suit.
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Note, the OSHA fine would be chicken feed next to the wrongful death suit where the attorney for the plaintiff would present the fact of the fine as evidence that Amazon was culpable.
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Amazon was really sweating there over that fine, they almost had to close shop.
It's not the fines, but the follow-on effects that would act as multipliers, eg lawsuits, insurance, reputation, etc. For example, a speeding ticket may only be $50, but your insurance rates will go up by $100/year for 7 years and you will look bad in the eyes of anyone who pulls your driving record.
in Other Words... (Score:2)
Indiana threw the deceased worker under the forklift.
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If the worker was already dead, did Amazon replace illegal aliens with zombies for their workforce?
Some might think that ghoulish, but it sounds like a real no-brainer. Imagine the horde of savings. No mandatory breaks, just occasional outbreaks. No wages, just a pound of flesh to pay every week. And the only sure thing your workforce has to worry about are taxes because they're already dead!
Race to the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nobody wins except the ruling class.
In a race to the bottom, the worst thing that can happen is you win.
The family needs to sue for big Millions now. (Score:2)
The family needs to sue for big Millions now.
Camp dust (Score:2)
In Communist Indiana no record of you.