Report Reveals Numerous Cases of Amazon Workers Being Treated in Ways That Leave Them Homeless, Unable To Work or Bereft of Income After Workplace Accidents (theguardian.com) 359
Several readers have shared a report: Vickie Shannon Allen, 49, started working at Amazon as a counter in a fulfillment warehouse at Haslet, Texas, in May 2017. At first, like many employees, Allen was excited by the idea of working for one of the fastest growing corporations in the world. That feeling dissipated quickly after a few months. [...] Nor is Allen alone. A Guardian investigation has revealed numerous cases of Amazon workers suffering from workplace accidents or injuries in its gigantic warehouse system and being treated in ways that leave them homeless, unable to work or bereft of income.
Allen's story began on 24 October last year when she injured her back counting goods on a workstation that was missing a brush guard, a piece of safety equipment meant to prevent products from falling onto the floor. She used a tote bin to try to compensate for the missing brush guard, and hurt her back while counting in an awkward position. The injury was the beginning of an ongoing ordeal she is still working to amend at Amazon. Over the course of a few weeks, Amazon's medical triage area gave her use of a heating pad to use on her back, while Amazon management sent her home each day without pay until Allen pushed for workers compensation. "I tried to work again, but I couldn't stretch my right arm out and I'm right-handed. So I was having a hard time keeping up. This went on for about three weeks," Allen said. Despite not getting paid, Allen was spending her own money to drive 60 miles one way to the warehouse each day just to be sent home. Once on workers compensation, Allen started going to physical therapy. In January 2018, she returned to work and injured herself again on the same workstation that still was not fixed.
Allen's story began on 24 October last year when she injured her back counting goods on a workstation that was missing a brush guard, a piece of safety equipment meant to prevent products from falling onto the floor. She used a tote bin to try to compensate for the missing brush guard, and hurt her back while counting in an awkward position. The injury was the beginning of an ongoing ordeal she is still working to amend at Amazon. Over the course of a few weeks, Amazon's medical triage area gave her use of a heating pad to use on her back, while Amazon management sent her home each day without pay until Allen pushed for workers compensation. "I tried to work again, but I couldn't stretch my right arm out and I'm right-handed. So I was having a hard time keeping up. This went on for about three weeks," Allen said. Despite not getting paid, Allen was spending her own money to drive 60 miles one way to the warehouse each day just to be sent home. Once on workers compensation, Allen started going to physical therapy. In January 2018, she returned to work and injured herself again on the same workstation that still was not fixed.
Free Market (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the free market at work. Exactly as intended by the corporations in charge.
Re:Free Market (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the free market at work. It's ripe for unionization.
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Nothing is stopping that from happening now... except for the long line of other semi-skilled workers waiting to take their places.
Then again, since we're experiencing a decent, hot-growing economy, and an ever-tightening labor market, Amazon may have to get their shit together before too long if they expect to keep employees... well, unless they go full robot in the warehouses, anyway.
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Nothing is stopping that from happening now... except for the long line of other semi-skilled workers waiting to take their places.
Ah well, that's OK then. People don't matter if there are spare people.
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...Nothing is stopping that from happening now... except for the long line of other semi-skilled workers waiting to take their places....
One can be as skilled as it gets, but being 50+ years old makes her/him a potential target of the ageism.
Ageism is real. I had thought otherwise, but now I encounter it myself regularly. One has to be not only skilled but young, pretty, plus posses a baby face.
People of advanced age still may mitigate this problem by being fit via exercise and diet.
One can be young and not believing all this, but wait and see...
Re:Free Market (Score:5, Informative)
This is the free market at work. Exactly as intended by the corporations in charge.
This is the free market at work. It's ripe for unionization.
Good luck with that ... Sentiment from several sources (Google: Kavanaugh anti-union), quoting from the first:
Judge Kavanaugh routinely rules against workers and their families and regularly sides with employers against employees seeking justice in the workplace, including CWA members.
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Workers aren't always correct. Unions often become corrupt and bloated. Undocumented workers hurt citizens.
What, specifically, has Kavanaugh done that is bad? Being anti-union isn't inherently bad. I say that as someone who is supportive of people's right to collectively bargain.
Re:Free Market (Score:5, Interesting)
Workers aren't always correct. Unions often become corrupt and bloated. Undocumented workers hurt citizens.
Points taken.
What, specifically, has Kavanaugh done that is bad? Being anti-union isn't inherently bad. I say that as someone who is supportive of people's right to collectively bargain.
Well... The article Brett Kavanaugh Ruled Against Workers When No One Else Did [huffingtonpost.com] cites several cases where Kavanaugh sides with corporations over the interests of workers, also noting:
“Based on his record, we can expect that Judge Kavanaugh will continue to protect the interests of already powerful corporate CEOs instead of working families,” the Communications Workers of America said in a statement.
That article (and several others, below) also talk about a case where Kavanaugh sided with SeaWorld and against OSHA when a trainer was killed (and, apparently, eaten) by an orca -- basically asserting that "he knew the risks".
OSHA used what’s known as the general duty clause to cite SeaWorld for safety violations after the whale Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010. SeaWorld challenged the citations, but the appeals panel sided with OSHA, ruling that SeaWorld knew its protections for trainers like Brancheau were insufficient and that it could have prevented her death had it taken the proper steps.
Kavanaugh disagreed. He compared working at SeaWorld to playing a sport like ice hockey that comes with inherent dangers, and, unlike his colleagues on the panel, argued that OSHA doesn’t have the legal standing to regulate it.
“When should we as a society paternalistically decide that the participants in these sports and entertainment activities must be protected from themselves – that the risk of significant physical injury is simply too great even for eager and willing participants?” he asked.
Jordan Barab, a former OSHA official during the Obama years, wrote Tuesday on his blog Confined Space that the SeaWorld case shows Kavanaugh to be “a threat to workers and to OSHA.”
“Kavanaugh’s idea of making America great again apparently hearkens back to a time before the Workers Compensation laws and the Occupational Safety and Health Act were passed,” Barab wrote. “Back then employers who maimed or killed workers often escaped legal responsibility by arguing that the employee had ‘assumed’ the risk when he or she took the job and the employer therefore had no responsibility to make the job safer.”
Maybe it's just me, but that's appalling. Can't wait for that precedent to be exploited, *especially* if Kavanaugh is confirmed to SCOTUS. Just get someone to sign something that says, "There is a risk of ..." and goodbye legal liability.
Ford customer: The car shifted into Reverse by itself, backed over and killed my grandfather.
Ford lawyer: (Pointing to sales agreement) He knew the risks.
Ford Sales Agreement
There is a risk that the vehicle transmission may unexpectedly shift from Park to Reverse, causing the vehicle to back over and kill your grandfather.
Judge: Hmm... Let me check Kavanaugh in OSHA v. SeaWorld... Okay. Case dismissed.
Re: Free Market (Score:5, Insightful)
Which part of this is "the free market", and how exactly would a different financial system have prevented it?
Also, don't you find the story a bit fishy? She injured her back counting things? Really? And then she couldn't work because she couldn't lift her arm? To count things? But she could somehow still drive 120 miles each day? Because a back injury which somehow paralyses your arm doesn't impact your driving ability?
Sounds like fishing for workers comp ... which is the exact opposite of "free market".
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You can drive with one arm as long as your car is an automatic. You can only pick up some things with one arm. Not that hard to figure out.
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Which part of this is "the free market", and how exactly would a different financial system have prevented it?
Also, don't you find the story a bit fishy? She injured her back counting things? Really? And then she couldn't work because she couldn't lift her arm? To count things? But she could somehow still drive 120 miles each day? Because a back injury which somehow paralyses your arm doesn't impact your driving ability?
Sounds like fishing for workers comp ... which is the exact opposite of "free market".
From TFA:
"In the meantime, Allen has become homeless after a workplace accident left her unable to do her job."
Yeah, she sure made out on her workers comp fraud! Maybe read the article before you just start making things up.
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1 in 6 workers in Europe is on public dole, most for stress or lower back problems, both notoriously difficult to actually prove.
Also bleat about Kavenaugh, so don't rule that out as a driving force for this story at this moment.
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This is the free market at work.
This part of the "free market" is already regulated under OSHA in the US. There are plenty of regs around workplace safety, especially around items falling on you from above.
Enforcement is a different issue, of course, but there are anonymous tip lines.
There's also worker's comp, which she eventually took advantage of, which was created to cope with just such situations as minor injuries preventing work for a short time. (It's a rotten deal for permanent injuries, as lawsuits yield much higher awards.)
Amaz
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I have a dubious attitude to those who post using a handle. Guess how much I trust a shill called "Anonymous Coward".
If you want to be believed, at least get a handle. Better, point to some externally verifiable sources of data.
The gulag is SOOO much better! (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe they could be fighting for food in Venezuelan late-stage socialism.
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What happened there was not real socialism, it was corruption and stupidity using socialism as a facade, just like in USA we don't have real capitalism, we got corruption and stupidity using the word freedom as a facade.
So if it's impossible to have "real socialism" (because all the failed efforts weren't "real socialism"), WHY THE FUCK DO IDIOTS KEEP PUSHING FOR IT???
You can't win the argument by saying all failed attempts at socialism weren't "real socialism" - because what you're really saying is "real socialism" can't reasonably be attained.
Or you're just trying to fool people: TRUST ME! IT WILL WORK THIS TIME! AND IF YOU LIKE YOUR DOCTOR, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DOCTOR!"
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There are many countries where a mixed system is working just fine.
Re:The gulag is SOOO much better! (Score:4, Insightful)
Communism, on the other hand, has the additional factor of a "revolution" needed to overthrow the previous form of government... as opposed to what someone below wrote about it (as they don't seem to understand what it means either, so you're not alone in your fucking ignorance). A revolution seems to be exactly the same as what the far-right fascists in the US have been espousing for years, although they want to overthrown a democratically elected government and the Constitution (all the while calling themselves patriots because they're too fucking stupid to understand what that word means as well).
But, and here's the other problem.. your strawman argument that everyone keeps pushing for socialism shows that, again, you're a fucking idiot. No one is suggesting pure socialism is the way to go, and a lot of people (not you, because you're a fucking idiot that doesn't understand that words have meanings) understand the very significant differences between what complete dipshits like you think socialism is, and what it actually is.... as well as the differences in the countries you dipshits always list off (N Korea, Russia, and now Venezuela) and the actual idea of socialism not needing a central government.
What people are pushing for is along the Nordic model of democratic socialism, where the larger issues are dealt with by the government, so that people can live decent lives. It works there, it would work here... if we didn't have so many fucking fascists on the right who think they're the only ones that deserve anything. It works with Social Security, it works with Medicare/Medicaid.... people on the right are just too fucking stupid to see that, unless you threaten to take those things away from them; they'd never willingly give up their OWN little slices of socialism.
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At least it's not like Alaska, who gets a metric shit ton more money back from the federal government than they put in, while taking part of the proceeds from "their" oil sales and giving it outright to the people
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What happened there was not real socialism, it was corruption and stupidity using socialism as a facade, just like in USA we don't have real capitalism, we got corruption and stupidity using the word freedom as a facade.
So if it's impossible to have "real socialism" (because all the failed efforts weren't "real socialism"), WHY THE FUCK DO IDIOTS KEEP PUSHING FOR IT???
You can't win the argument by saying all failed attempts at socialism weren't "real socialism" - because what you're really saying is "real socialism" can't reasonably be attained.
Or you're just trying to fool people: TRUST ME! IT WILL WORK THIS TIME! AND IF YOU LIKE YOUR DOCTOR, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DOCTOR!"
We do have real socialism. We have Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid, and SNAP, and unemployment insurance, to name a few programs. They work quite well, as long as people in government don't work against them. For example, the Republicans like to tell people that Social Security is unaffordable and will go "bankrupt". It's not true [forbes.com] but it works to turn people against a system they have opposed on principle from the start.
Socialism works fine as long as it is properly regulated, just like Capi
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and you think capitalism does work? enjoy licking those boots!
I don't think "capitalism" means what you think it means. It does not imply unregulated free markets, or anarchy.
Capitalism is a system where the means of production are owned and controlled through money - you can start or buy any business just by having the money to do so. Regulating the operation of those businesses is still within capitalism.
Contrast feudalism, where the means of production are acquired through military victory. Contrast socialism, where the means of production are acquired through po
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Contrast communism, where the means of production are acquired by genocidal murder of tens of millions of people.
That is nonsense, comunism only means that means of production are property of fhe people, like it should be. And hence there is no point/way to aquire them.
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Regulating the operation of those businesses is still within capitalism.
You should try explaining that to republicans.. their heads will explode (which wouldn't be such a bad thing for this country).
Contrast feudalism, where the means of production are acquired through military victory.
The means of production are provided for by the peasants who the nobility allow to live (depending on their whim). We are closer to feudalism than capitalism.
Contrast socialism, where the means of production are acquired through political influence.
In socialism, the ownership of production, as well as ownership of resources, are shared by everyone in society; as Jesus teachings go:
Acts 4:32–35: 32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of
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Re:The gulag is SOOO much better! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the US was pretty backwater until WWII, at which point we became the biggest economy in the world because all of our competitors' industrial capacity got wiped out during the war.
Re:The gulag is SOOO much better! (Score:5, Insightful)
I do enjoy not starving to death and dying from polio. Modern technology is also quite nice.
People starve to death under Capitalism, and avoided starving to death before Capitalism was a thing. Salk's team developed their vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh, which is state funded. Development of modern technology has relied heavily on research grants from the federal government. The Internet we are using now likely would not have come about without a government research initiative.
None of these things have resulted solely from Capitalism. They required investment from the government, i.e. Socialism, in order to become viable products.
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No true capitalist fallacy mixed with no true socialist fallacy. Good job, dude!
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This is the free market at work. Exactly as intended by the corporations in charge.
Really? I don't think you are being fair. As I understand this there ARE laws about on the job injuries and ways to obtain such compensation from employers both by enforcement agencies and civil lawsuits.
The problem I see with this story is that the employee has yet to exhaust their possible legal remedies with Amazon's Workman's compensation insurance and with Amazon itself. Yea, it seems Amazon is dragging it's feet and isn't all that concerned with safety, but this anti Amazon PR campaign is a bit prem
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Really? I don't think you are being fair. As I understand this there ARE laws about on the job injuries and ways to obtain such compensation from employers both by enforcement agencies and civil lawsuits.
I am being fair, even if a little sarcastic (plenty of commenters here think that injury liability is against a free and open market). There are laws but they aren't being enforced. Amazon has been investigated how many times in how many states? And what's come of it?
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It was the free market at work in Adam Smith's time as well, as he observed. A free market always leads to emergent or direct collusion to fix prices as high as they can be. Applecart economics doesn't work at a macro level. The market is a pack of ruthless buggers who will steal your teeth when you're sleeping. This is why we have regulations, or we used to.
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Well, shipping is free if you're a Prime member...
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Yeah, it's free if you pay for it.
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Well, shipping is free if you're a Prime member...
Um.... Sir.. Not for everything, only stuff that Amazon chooses... AND it's not always 2 days anymore, it can be longer, much longer.
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Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an Amazon fulfillment center near me and after looking at some of the requirements for their professional job listings and hearing stories from people in my network I decided that I would stay well clear of them. They seem to be on the low end of the work/life balance quality spectrum as well as paying peanuts.
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I have an Amazon fulfillment center near me and after looking at some of the requirements for their professional job listings and hearing stories from people in my network I decided that I would stay well clear of them. They seem to be on the low end of the work/life balance quality spectrum as well as paying peanuts.
Many many many people do not have that luxury. They get any job they can.
I know and I still have sympathy for these people even though I have the luxury of choice.
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I have an Amazon fulfillment center near me and after looking at some of the requirements for their professional job listings and hearing stories from people in my network I decided that I would stay well clear of them. They seem to be on the low end of the work/life balance quality spectrum as well as paying peanuts.
Many many many people do not have that luxury. They get any job they can.
I know and I still have sympathy for these people even though I have the luxury of choice.
I have a little less sympathy for those in this situation who also voted "R" in recent elections. Sure, they got suckered, but that's also on them. They can reap what they sowed.
D or R has nothing to do with this.
Re:Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Insightful)
D or R has nothing to do with this.
The Republicans are decided more anti-worker. Trump has been appointing, and the Senate confirming, noticeably white, male, conservative judges at a record pace [washingtonpost.com] (with some analysis [washingtonpost.com]) If Kavanaugh gets appointed to the SCOTUS, then things may (will probably) be even less beneficial for workers, as noted by the articles I mentioned here [slashdot.org].
So, ya, the "D" and "R" matter - overall.
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Amazon had this problem well before an R was in office. You're just tying to warp the situation to fit your narrative
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Amazon had this problem well before an R was in office. You're just tying to warp the situation to fit your narrative
Agreed that this issue w/Amazon has persisted for a long while. I'm just saying that it probably won't get any better, and may get worse, under the current administration. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that. In addition, it is true that many people who voted for Trump are the same people that will be hurt by his, and his Administration's) policies (including tariffs). It's also true that this administration is appointing many judges who will probably not be sympathetic to injured/wronged people like in TF
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I'm not disagreeing with the your narrative, just that it is relevant in this case
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Trump has been appointing, and the Senate confirming, noticeably white,
So what? Are you racist?
male,
So what? Are you sexist?
conservative judges
So what? Would you complain if the shoe was on the other foot?
at a record pace
So what? Would you rather he not fill the vacancies of Obama (and prior) judges? Would you rather our courts not have the staffing needed to function?
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Many many many people do not have that luxury. They get any job they can.
Unless they're on a sex offender registry (or similarly ostracized in the workplace)... why? Unemployment is at record lows, and still dropping as I type this.
The labor market is fairly tight right now, and all indications are that it's only going to get tighter. This means more competition for workers' time and attention, and if Amazon becomes known as a shithole to work for, they're going to have an impossible time finding people willing to work for them as time passes and as things continue on their curr
Re:Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Insightful)
The labor market is fairly tight right now, and all indications are that it's only going to get tighter. This means more competition for workers' time and attention, and if Amazon becomes known as a shithole to work for, they're going to have an impossible time finding people willing to work for them as time passes and as things continue on their current economic trajectory.
It's a rather strange work market at the moment. Fewer people are unemployed but average wage (adjusted for inflation) is dropping quite fast.
It may be that for the lower third- the alternates to Amazon are just as bad. They can be paid peanuts or circus peanuts. Work in bad conditions or terrible conditions. You would think that with so many people employed wages would go up to compete, and usually they do, but they're staying low for now for some reason.
Re:Doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Insightful)
Shit jobs are shit jobs. I've worked my share of them. Any job you can learn on the job without prior training is going to suck, both in pay and working conditions, because you can be replaced with anyone who can fog a mirror.
Very few people can only do unskilled labor, but if your IQ is low enough then that's what you're stuck with. Nothing but sympathy for anyone in that boat, and it's the biggest looming economic problem in the US, because those are exactly the jobs that robots will replace in the next couple of decades.
If you're smart enough to learn a skill, it's on you to get out of that unskilled job. We could do a better job helping people get training, especially for the trades, but community colleges aren't terrible here. But we as a society better figure out how to help those who aren't that smart (and only giving them money isn't enough - most people still have a work ethic, and need something to do to feel that they're contributing).
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The unemployment rate is bullshit. The workforce participation rate is what's relevant, and that's near a 40-year low.
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Many many many people do not have that luxury. They get any job they can.
Unless they're on a sex offender registry (or similarly ostracized in the workplace)... why? Unemployment is at record lows, and still dropping as I type this.
The labor market is fairly tight right now, and all indications are that it's only going to get tighter. This means more competition for workers' time and attention, and if Amazon becomes known as a shithole to work for, they're going to have an impossible time finding people willing to work for them as time passes and as things continue on their current economic trajectory.
Exactly this. As a friend of mine said back in 2000 when getting a job was hard and they where not handing out raises where we worked... "Don't worry, it's a buyer's market right now, but eventually it will be a seller's market, best be ready." Well, it took 18 years but it's a seller's market for what I got to sell.
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"Unemployment is at record lows, and still dropping as I type this."
Only if you are dumb enough to use the u2 instead of the u6. And even that is well-known to deliberately not count people. Why everyone keeps repeating that obvious lie is beyond me.
There are a few industries that actively need employees, ones which cannot be automated away yet and which few people are going into, like mechanic or handyman. Maintenance man is the most dangerous job in America. Cop is something like #13 on the list, for comp
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Yeah, an unfortunate consequence of allowing monopolies to thrive.
Amazon has something like 5% of the retail market. What does that have to do with monopolies? Somehow Amazon keeps coming up in stories about monopolies, and I don't get it. They're smaller than Walmart, in retail.
AWS is very much the dominant player in "cloud", but Azure has enough market share that you can't call AWS a monopoly either.
Hey, iphones and che guavera shirts need to be.... (Score:2, Insightful)
....cheap... for the modern communist to still be able to afford soy lates and dream of other people paying for their stuff.
Communism, the great way for EVERYONE to be poor. *
* = except for the party elite.
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"Communism failed because capitalism didn't subsidize it enough." You people would be funny if you weren't so f*cking eil.
Those things also tend t
Inefficient (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions would help.
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Agreed. But a Union wouldn't help. Unions start off as good idea, but over time they become corrupted and no longer serve the good of the workers they supposedly represent.. Ex - UAW, and various public-sector unions.
Ya, but the United States is also a "union" -- of local/state and federal governments -- and ... oh wait. Just saw the part about, "no longer serve the good of the workers they supposedly represent". Never mind.
I Know Amazon is Evil . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I certainly believe that she was treated unfairly, but if she returned after recovery to work on the same broken machine, why did she believe that things would end differently, that she would not be injured in the same manner again? Even if she were just not smart enough to know any better, her supervisor would seem to me to be criminally negligent in not having a machine repaired that injured her before and then returning her to that machine. And by "criminally negligent", I mean that he knowingly placed her in a situation that he knew world harm her.
Something does not seem right here.
Re:I Know Amazon is Evil . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe in her brain it went like this
>work for business owned by world's richest man
>drive 60 miles for shitty job and low pay
>get injured at work
>recover
>get injured again
>sue
>retire in luxury from millions of bezo-bux due to settlement from company, in its attempt to avoid (even more) bad press.
Not to defend amazon (they're horrible) or attack someone who's basically down on their luck.. but there must have been a job closer to home that paid a little bit better?
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Actually 60 miles would be, say 2 gallons of gas, about $6. Toss in wear and tear on the car and a local job for $1/hr less would still come out ahead.
Fast food and Walmart pay pretty well for entry-level type jobs (~$10/hr), people with brains will generally make manager after a short while, and there always seem to be vacancies. I dunno why someone would pick literal back breaking work over that for less pay, unless they've done something to get blacklisted from retail/food service (caught robbing a cas
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If I've been reading the reports correctly, fast food and similar places generally ensure that you work less than 20 hours a week at an irregular schedule. So you've got to juggle two irregular hour jobs, neither of which will provide health insurance, workers comp, or other "full time employee" benefits.
I think you need to re-figure the costs/rewards.
Or maybe it's the only job she could get? (Score:3)
Difficult to take many WC cases at face-value... (Score:5, Insightful)
The hysteria of frequent media smear pieces notwithstanding, it's tough to take articles like this seriously at face-value. Lots of broad generalizations and impossible-to-prove (or disprove) allegations of straight-line relationships between an alleged safety issue with an employer, and outcomes like homelessness or disabling injury.
Unfortunately, part of my job is working with EPLI (Employment Practices Liability Insurance) carriers and risk managers. For every actual issue reported, there are multiple instances of people "gaming the system", fraudulently claiming workplace injury or discrimination, or filing repeated false HR reports to attempt to build up a "history" of abuses, being terminated for their bulls**t, and then pointing to that "history" as the REASON for their termination. Maybe I'm just too used to seeing the seedy underside of the Workers' Comp business, but to take light-on-details reports like this, and draw inferences of chronically deficient, or criminal, practices on the part of the large employer, is hard.
Most employees want to do a good job, be fairly compensated, and be appreciated at work. But a small percentage view work as a scam. Those aren't just the ones that spoil the party for everyone, but they're ALSO the ones most likely to turn up in press reports, because "going loud" and getting a company to pay them to go away is part-and-parcel of the scam.
If these folks were legitimately injured and abused by dumb-ass managers at Amazon, then I feel for them. But it's equally likely that a papercut became a "permanently debilitating hand injury", if historical reports like this are any guideline. Sad, but true.
Re:Difficult to take many WC cases at face-value.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, you can believe what you want to believe. There are certainly real cases, where real people have been hurt by actual negligence, or discriminated against with true malice. It happens, and those people deserve to be protected. There are lots of resources to help those people, and whatever the newspaper says, there are far more gov't departments that tend towards over-reacting with severe enforcement, moreso than turning a blind eye to true workplace violations.
But you have to recognize that when you credulously accept every story about injury and discrimination at face-value, you're not helping the real victims -- you're hurting all of the people who REALLY HAVE been wronged by dumping resources, attention and time on cases that distract from real problems.
There's just too many problems with this story. There are thousands of vacant jobs, requiring few or no skills, in the DFW market. A 60-mile commute in that area, for a specific job, makes too little sense because of how dense that area is. Rents are not that high -- $500/month median rent for a 1Br/1Ba, which is less than 33% of even a $10/hr job working 35-hours per week. She claims to have willingly gone back to doing an un-safe job, even assuming the employer was stupid enough to allow that to occur -- and, in terms of safety gear, that "all important" brush guard that the article hangs its hat on, isn't actually an OSHA-recognized piece of safety equipment!!
I see the horrible crud that happens to people every day, and I do count my blessings. But you do nobody any good when you get outraged and demand action based on "investigative journalism" like this crap. It has every hallmark of trying to make the "Amazon is evil" point, and too many warning flags that no sane person (or employer) would ever actually commit. If this piece is even 75% accurate, then it should be making the point of needing better mental-health counseling in TX, not one about workplace safety.
Malice or incompetence? (Score:2, Insightful)
She used a tote bin to try to compensate for the missing brush guard, and hurt her back while counting in an awkward position.
So instead of alerting someone and getting the dangerous condition fixed, she tried to work around it herself and got hurt.
In January 2018, she returned to work and injured herself again on the same workstation that still was not fixed.
Good grief. You'd like to credit her with enough intelligence not to just turn around and do exactly the same thing that had just put her on the lam for 3 months, but then you'd probably have to conclude she was fishing for a payout from the big A.
She currently lives out of her car in the parking lot of the Amazon fulfillment center. “They cost me my home, they screwed me over and over and I go days without eating.”
Or then again, maybe she's just a bit... off.
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They were alerted. They did nothing.
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Re:Malice or incompetence? (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes you think that one paragraph is a god's-eye view, completely omniscient, leaving out nothing?
One paragraph? You and I must be reading different articles. This was an extensive hit piece. They had every incentive to include every bit of dirt in they could find -- and went out of their way to fluff up the few little scraps they had to work with.
You're making a judgement on someone you've never met and never will meet, about a situation you did not and will not ever witness with your own eyes, based on a single account.
Yes. Her account. The one that would by definition be the most biased toward her you could hope to get.
Don't be naive.
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There's a long history of people who alert (Score:3)
People don't expect to be treated this way by a company as large as Amazon in America. You've got it pounded into your skull from birth this is the greatest country on planet earth from day 1. Nobody wants to believe that somebody in America could be taken advantage of to the point where they can't eat, can't afford a place to lay their
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Uh uh... sorry. It's not like Haslet TX is the armpit of nowhere, and Amazon is the only employer in town. It's on the edge of the DFW metroplex. As plenty of others have indicated up-thread, she could have gotten a job at Burger King, or WalMart, or very likely some nice quiet job that requires no lifting and no skills, like a page in a library, or receptionist or filing clerk in one of 10-zillion companies. We're at ~4% unemployment, in case you haven't seen the news -- there are more jobs right now t
A Few Issues Here (Score:5, Insightful)
2) It took her "a few weeks" to "push for" workman's comp? That's a day-one call. If you don't get it, you call the state Dept. of Labor (whatever the name is in that particular state).
3) When she came back, the guard was still not in place? a) refuse to work until it's fixed. b) see point (1).
Would a union help this? Probably. But unions also come with downsides (I've been a member of 3 unions and interacted with a few hundred). The plaintiff could have dealt with this a long time ago if she'd just called the appropriate government agencies--they *love* to fine big corporations for safety violations. Unions fought for--and got--these laws. But they're meaningless if people don't use them to protect themselves.
Honestly? 10 minutes on Google should have given this woman all the correct answers she needed to solve the issues. The original safety issues fall on Amazon, but after that? Most of her problems are the result of her "waiting for someone to fix it", rather than using the tools available to her.
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I wonder how helpful her local OSHA office in Texas would have been, considering that Texas is one of the more pro-business red states. It would have been worth a shot, anyway.
In the blue state I live in, a guy I used to work with basically forced our employer to get him a ergonomic workstation and chair by filing an OSHA complaint. They ended up firing him for gross incompetence later, but by filing that case he probably bought himself a few months where the company was afraid of a retaliation suit.
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And... That guy you used to work with probably had fair standing for an unlawful-termination suit under a host of ADA and Whistleblower laws & regs. If you need to call the feds, do so--but document *everything* you can. "A few months" shouldn't matter if you can provide cre
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It's a pretty bad example (Score:2)
She got injured because she didn't speak up or refuse to work (which would've been protected in court), then she eventually got herself on workers comp (which takes 1 doctors visit), she earned money without needing to commute, she got medical expenses paid by ObamaCare. What is the problem exactly?
Predictable (Score:2)
All these Slashdot commenters jumping in front of this story like it's a bullet, just giddy to defend the international megacorp. I'm sure Bezos is very grateful for the free service.
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Re:49 and having to do manual labor to live (Score:5, Insightful)
I suggest we start with anonymous slashdot posters.
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but they are supported, by their mothers upstairs, and not reproducing.
Re: 49 and having to do manual labor to live (Score:2, Insightful)
+1
Some stories deserve sympathy, but at 49, she can fuck off.
Re: 49 and having to do manual labor to live (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I'm as libertarded as they come, but come on. Not every worker can graduate to middle management by 40. Some manual labour still has to be done these days, no reason to abuse the workers.
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At 49, actions that wouldn't have caused injury earlier in life start becoming dangerous - repetitive stress injury and various strains due to using body parts that have been inactive for years. She can be forgiven for developing her first injury. Going back and hurting herself again. not so much.
It does appear that Amazon has been a bit callous or careless here; the weeks without pay would not have happened if she had a good manager.
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It does appear that Amazon has been a bit callous or careless here; the weeks without pay would not have happened if she had a good manager.
The weeks without pay and still having to commute to and from work every day probably had something to do with returning to work before she was healed up as well.
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You, sir, are a fucking moron. Your myopic outlook has fallen to the level of degeneracy.
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Or, she could just live in her car, like other Amazon workers are doing [theguardian.com].
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Worker pay and benefits climbing at fastest pace in 10 years, ECI finds [marketwatch.com]
Does anyone have any idea what could have happened 10 years ago that caused worker pay and benefits to stagnate for a whole damn decade?
Anyone?
Bueller?
I'll bite, but the problem started about 20 years ago... With the creation of the "subprime mortgage" which was needed to loan money to unqualified borrowers, backed by two Federally backed mortgage companies. A pile of money got loaned to people who couldn't pay it back and real estate prices shot though the roof as the market was awash in cheap money loaned by banks, converted into questionable securities backed by the fed. Why did banks do this in the first place? Anybody have a clue how this could take
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Bush not only didn't see it and didn't avoid it, he took additional actions, such as military adventurism and tax cuts which exacerbated the problem.
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Bush not only didn't see it and didn't avoid it, he took additional actions, such as military adventurism and tax cuts which exacerbated the problem.
Military adventurism? You mean the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions? You act like we got into those just for the thrill of blowing stuff up..
Tax Cuts? How on earth did that make the situation with the subprime mess worse? And Didn't the next administration not do the same things and more?
And you are totally discounting the facts behind how this whole house of cards got built and haven't admitted to the players or their motives in the setup phase. Had this house of cards not been built in the first plac
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And of course it had NOTHING to do with lenders setting time bombs on the loans, lending money they didn't even have, or talking people into McMansion loans rather than starter homes they might have had a chance of paying off.
Note that it wasn't just (or even mostly) poor people who got nailed when the bubble popped. It was also middle class (former) homeowners and commercial properties. Then there's the whole robo-signing thing and banks trying to foreclose on properties they didn't even hold a mortgage on
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failure? there were some huge wins for certain bankers. look at the whole picture.
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It's almost like we have a GOP-controlled government that got a SCOTUS appointment and now has another, which will guarantee a court that will basically start from the Janus case and make all labor organization illegal because it infringes on imaginary people (corporations).
Straw-man much?
Janus merely noted that coerced union membership is unconstitutional.
Nothing's stopping Amazon's employees from unionizing.
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It's almost like we have a GOP-controlled government that got a SCOTUS appointment and now has another, which will guarantee a court that will basically start from the Janus case and make all labor organization illegal because it infringes on imaginary people (corporations).
Straw-man much?
Janus merely noted that coerced union membership is unconstitutional.
Nothing's stopping Amazon's employees from unionizing.
Actually, I understand that the latest was really only about collecting union dues from paychecks without explicit permission. The right to organize or being a member of a union wasn't effected, nor was a union's right to negotiate on behalf of their members. What WAS effected was a host of unions loosing income because they where collecting dues from non-members under the pretense of it being a union shop.
Re: An injury to one is the concern of all. (Score:5, Funny)
Did Abe Lincoln fight for the unions? Of course not.
Well, he didn't carry a rifle, but I'm pretty sure he was on the Union side. Not sure what schools teach these days, of course.