- On 5 Sep, 2021 he asked his team lead to assign extra help because he and his colleagues couldn't keep up with the amount of work. An argument between them ensued but some help was assigned at the end of the day.
- In the morning of 6 Sep, 2021 he felt stabbing in his chest and had difficulties breathing. He asked the team lead to call a medic (there were medical care worked employed by Amazon) but he refused and offered to walk him to the medic instead.
- He passed out on his way to the medic and never regained consciousness.
"The water spider is a term that refers to a specific person whose main job is to make sure that materials are supplied to where they are needed. While this is mainly a material replenishment position, it offers a bit more flexibility, and some additional benefits if well-implemented. The rationale behind having such a person is to allow the rest of the personnel to devote their full attention to tasks that add value to the process. This also highlights how much transportation waste and inefficiency exists in the process by isolating it all into one or more positions."
> Water spider is a term that refers to a specific person whose main job is to take care of intermittent tasks such as supplying material at workstations.
> A water spider is a Lean production personnel role centered around timely and accurate stock replenishment. The water spider team member is similar to a mobile Kanban system that refills the production line with the required materials to maintain a steady flow.
I had not heard the term either. Based on what others have written here, the position sounds similar to, but not exactly the same as, what manufacturing companies call an expeditor: A person assigned to the manufacturing floor who gets hot (late) orders finished and shipped as soon as possible.
> He asked the team lead to call a medic (there were medical care worked employed by Amazon) but he refused and offered to walk him to the medic instead.
This is the step that most people would point out as the main 'mistake'. However, a medic without his equipment isn't a lot of use, and it's pretty likely the facility had a medical bay. For a patient who can walk, taking them to the medical bay will probably lead to better care quicker than calling the medic out. Walking there with someone is a very sensible precaution.
Imagine the reverse... Medic called to employee. Medic doesn't have defibrillator in equipment bag (it's filled with stuff for more common accidents). Employee dies because now the medic has to make the journey from the medical bay to the employee four times, taking far too long.
Is it though? If it is your team lead who apparently has the managerial power to deny you a medic, they certainly should also be required to be competent enough to make that decision.
Anything else is just an accident waiting to happen (and in this case, did happen).
If you think someone is having a heart attack please call the emergency services immediately and hope you don't need a defibrillator or to perform CPR.
Edit: To add I had one in May despite being fit, young-ish and with no cardio-vascular problems. It came on whilst swimming and I foolishly carried on through it, got dressed and walked home, lay down for a bit before I got my wife to take me to the emergency room where they did approximately 4 seconds of EKG before stuffing me full of drugs and rushing me to surgery via an ambulance. For an idea of the level of potential for dying the ambulance came with a doctor as well as paramedics.
I didn't. I was ill the previous week and woke up on the Thursday during the night with what I thought was really bad heartburn even though I don't really get it. Eventually fell back asleep and bought some antacids over the weekend. Weekend was pretty eventful, taking kids on walks and doing a lot of that with them on my shoulders.
So on the Monday I went swimming and thought the pain was related to being still a bit sick or heartburn. The reason I went to the hospital was the antacids weren't doing anything and it was pretty painful. I also nearly threw up in the changing rooms at the pool.
By the time I got to the hospital I was actually feeling quite a bit better and feeling a bit sheepish about being there. Then they hooked me up to the EKG and I knew something was very wrong by everyone going into overdrive. I didn't know how wrong until after the surgery (you're awake through the PCI) and the surgeon took me through what was going on. Basically I was minutes away from dying as my left coronary artery was completely blocked. They had to stent the clot to fix things.
The aftermath is that there wasn't a known cause. I have no chronic issues, or clotting issues and my arteries themselves are perfectly healthy. I was lucky and there was no visible damage to the heart. I'm back exercising again and now in my second set of rehab.
I think it would have highlighted issues earlier. In hindsight I definitely has flutters that I maybe should have gotten checked out. That said Apple themselves say that the watch won’t detect a heart attack. Presumably the bar for a device that does that reliably is pretty high.
> Medic doesn't have defibrillator in equipment bag
In Germany defibrillators are openly available in most public buildings and I think any industrial setting has to have them easily accessible too. They're as idiot proof as it gets: you push a big button and follow the instructions (automated voice commands, but I think there is also a text display as backup).
I don't know what the laws are like in Poland but all I'm saying is that this scenario you propose could easily be solved with basic health and safety regulations.
You're also ignoring that they could have called the medic while also moving him in the direction of the medical facility, assuming the movement didn't contribute to his death. Not to mention that a trained emergency medic should know what equipment to bring based on reported symptoms.
I took a CPR/First aid class a few months ago and one of the things we were told was to grab the portable defibrillator or know where one is nearby. Our office defib is no larger than a lunch box so not sure why a medic wouldn’t carry one. Also heart attacks is one of the most common incidents. 25% of my CPR training was dedicated to using it properly.
>Grzegorz (name changed) works in Amazon's warehouse in Sady near Poznań, who agreed to anonymously tell about the events of the beginning of September. - I remember that the day before, on September 5, this man asked the leader to assign someone to help, because he was not working anymore - he says. - The leader refused. The man who died later was to go on the next day with a complaint to the OPS manager, i.e. the main manager of a given department. He did not make it anymore. He was a very hardworking man. I wouldn't be able to refuse him anything. When he had breaks, he ate a sandwich and quickly returned to work. Look for such people with a candle. It really turned out what kind of insurance we have. We are meaningless pawns.
>According to Grzegorz, one piece of information has not been made public.
>- The very beginning of this event was not treated as an approach of man to man. The man, who reported the problem with catching his breath, was walking to the rescuer on his own quite a long distance, from point A to point B. It was a culpable mistake. In case of shortness of breath, he should not go there. The leader was walking beside him, but he was not helping him, not even as a support. Due to the safety rules related to COVID-19. It was the same leader who had refused to help the man the day before. They treated you like garbage, like typical waste
My friend is a very hard-working person. So, he was working in a Amazon warehouse in Scotland. In two years, he never missed a day or was late.
Then, he got this terrible thing when you get high temperature, nausea etc. He still went to work, commute taking hour. He was barely able to sit in a bus, because his face was green and his head was heavy and he was almost puking.
He gets to work and explains this. Manager tells him: "You can either start work, or you can go now, but then, don't come tomorrow". So, he did exactly that.
Is it really the case in the UK that working in a position for 2 years is a requirement before it becomes illegal to fire a person for going home sick once? What a sorry state of affairs.
Well, not quite, but in practice yes. In UK it's legal to let someone go without providing any reason whatsoever within the first 2 years of employment(you still have to observe the minimum amount of notice however, or pay it out). So while it is still illegal to let someone go due to sickness, a company can just terminate your contract without providing a reason why - they just don't have to. After 2 years you would have to be made redundant first, and that's quite a lot of work for an employer.
You don't have to be made redundant, you just need to have a formal process with the opportunity of the employee to change. So there's a distinction between a fair dismissal and an unfair one in the UK. For a fair one you must have a dismissal process that was followed, like a verbal warning (employer logs this), written warning, final warning, fired.
You can also dismiss someone if they can no longer do their job, e.g. a driver who loses their licence
Well yes, my point is that there are only 3 ways to "fire" someone in the UK after the initial 2 years, and none of them are what you'd call "at will". If you hired someone and they worked for you over 2 years, then you can't just get rid of them because you fancy it, circumstances have to change either with them or with your company to allow it. The ways are:
1) redundancy - which carries a legal proof of showing that the position is no longer needed, and you are not allowed to hire anyone else for the same or similar position for a length of time
2) end of contract due to performance issues - that is even more lengthy than the redundancy path usually, you have to clearly demonstrate that someone's performance has been inadequate, with a clearly demonstrable metric, but also you need to give the employee a chance to improve. Extra training, "performance improvement plans", at the very least written warnings etc. This process usually takes 6 months at minimum in order to satisfy all the legal bits around it.
3) immediate dismissal due to breaking the law, being caught stealing, driving drunk, destroying company property...this sort of stuff. The employer still has the legal burden of demonstrating that the stuff in question happened, but a police report is usually enough. I suppose something like a driver losing their licence and then literally being unable to do their job falls under this too.
None of the above allow for "you're sick? don't bother coming in tomorrow" scenario. If OP's friend's manager actually did say that, then it's a clear path for a lawsuit for unfair dismissal.
Go bankrupt? Borrow money to pay your staff? Ask various institutions for help? Arrange some kind of deal with your employees where you will pay them later if they agree to wait?
Like, "letting someone go because we ran out of money" is not a valid reason for dismissal.
No, it's a bit misleading. If you've been employed for less that 2 years, the employer doesn't have to give you a written statement giving the reasons and you cannot claim unfair dismissal unless you believe the reason falls under one of the automatically unfair criteria (such as pregancy, health and safety, discrimination etc). Going home sick could potentially be argued as health and safety, so it would be worth getting legal advice on the issue if that happens.
It's not the first case of work-related death in an Amazon warehouse in Poland; nor it is the first such case in Amazon globally. Most of those deaths happen because of appalling work conditions or management incompetence.
In normal companies, an accident like this leads to an overhaul of the working systems, internal audits, conversations with employees, and so on. So many IT companies have post-mortems for what can objectively be called the silliest stuff (compared to an actual death of an actual person). But here is Amazon, with its history of endangering its workforce, that once again will do nothing.
> Most of those deaths happen because of appalling work conditions
We need data to be sure of this. Remember when all those people making iPhones committed suicide because of the terrible working conditions [1]?
But further investigation then found that suicide rates amongst workers were actually lower than suicide rates of regular people in China or the USA...
This might well be a story like that. Without data we can't know.
Seems to be absolutely the case here. The worker has reported to his "leader" that he's feeling unwell but was ignored. I'd expect criminal charges to be brought against him at this point.
I think Amazon can implement whatever solution they want, but if your manager ignores a very direct report of feeling unwell then what else can you do?
>>But here is Amazon, with its history of endangering its workforce, that once again will do nothing.
Well, we'll see what happens in this case. Polish prosecutors can be very zealous(for better or worse) so I don't think "nothing" is on the table.
The problem is that the manager's behavior is likely a result of incentives. It's not that managers at amazon are worse people than managers at other companies. And if their incentives make it so hard for them to allow longer breaks or help employees that are feeling unwell, it is Amazon's fault that this happened.
And I'm sure the stated policy even within Amazon is that a medical issue should be immediately reported and a medic called. If the manager disregarded that policy for whatever perceived or real incentive...then that's still their fault.
This is disregarding reality. If incentives aren't aligned with policy then you'll get bad outcomes. If the company says "report medical issues" and also "no downtime" then you won't always get people reporting issues.
Sure. And it's a problem within the company that amazon will have to fix. But right now, for prosecutors, I can only imagine that the manager will be found criminally liable.
The incentives matter: what is the process that the manager is expected to follow? What is the impact on the manager's own employment metrics for allowing sick employees to leave?
(Note that the latter is a problem in lots more places; see "Bradford factor")
I agree that the person directly responsible for this tragedy is the manager, but this category of cockups almost always has systemic reasons.
In other words, we can punish the local manager, but that won't fix the fact that the corporate leadership of Amazon seems to foster an environment where this kind of management is accepted and perhaps even encouraged.
I have never worked at Amazon (and by the sounds of things, I never want to either), but it sounds like a dystopian nightmare. And we should not be surprised when people optimize their behavior to the dystopian nightmare if that's the environment that they have to succeed in.
Not a whole lot of consequences after they were found to employ self-proclaimed neonazis to keep literal slaves working in a German warehouse either. Amazon is irredeemable and nobody should buy anything from them.
Your comment belongs to some sort of dystopian fiction, but it’s sort of real as Amazon uses third parties so the blame doesn’t really ‘lies’ with Amazon, sickening.
> BERLIN — The workers came from across Europe to pack boxes for the online retailer Amazon at distribution centers in Germany during the Christmas rush. They did not expect to be watched over — some say intimidated — by thugs in neo-Nazi-style clothing and jackboots.
> On Friday, Amazon said it was investigating claims made in a documentary that a subcontractor employed security guards with neo-Nazi ties to oversee the immigrant workers.
> The documentary, broadcast Wednesday on the ARD public television network, showed guards in black uniforms with H.E.S.S., after Hensel European Security Services, but also the last name of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, emblazoned on their chests.
> According to the film, security guards employed by the subcontractor scared and intimidated hundreds of temporary workers from Hungary, Poland, Spain and other European countries.
The worst thing about telling people about why they should boycott Amazon IRL is that they just don't believe it. It sounds so outlandish that even with proof (such as this newspaper article) you can tell it doesn't really land. Very sad.
They benefited hugely from this and I have to this day not seen a public commitment to change things to make sure this does not happen. Even if Amazon was unaware of what they were doing, the fact that afterwards they mostly just papered over it and went on with their lives lends it a tacit approval ("don't get caught again"). If you don't see how this makes them evil, I think we just will never agree on it :)
The firm kept slaves (took passports, no pay, etc) to do the work in the warehouses that were guarded. Free labour is very cheap, that would be how they benefited.
How do you diagnose this as death from overwork? This seems a convenient view of the incident for those who want to push particular narrative against a popular boogeyman.
Of course Amazon has a duty of care to those suffering medical problems at work, but how do you jump from that to "death of overworking"?
Aaah, very similar to Mexico I see. We are always up there in the lists of countries where the people work the most. 5till the QoL in the country is pretty low.
For those who can't read Polish: apparently what happened was that he passed out and became unconscious while working on the morning shift in the warehouse. He never recovered.
No, that would be a normal accident. What actually happened was there was too much work, he asked his manager to give his team more people but they refused, and finally agreed to send someone at the end of the day. The next day the guy felt pain in the chest, could hardly walk, but the manager said he has to walk to the paramedic on his own (wtf?). So he lost consciousness while trying and never managed to regain it. Sick company, sick management.
For many of us this is going to be the future, die at work. I think it is unfair to make people work over 50 given that you likely to be dead by the age 70, making the retirement age 65+ is crazy. It would be much better to split 20+ - 20-30 - 20+ (childhood, working, retired) our life especially for warehouse workers. Please do not tell me we do not have the money for this when most of the wealth is owned by the top 1% who horde it, hide it and not paying any tax on it. We blow money on wars(on terror, on drugs and so on) and yet we do not have money for people to retire and enjoy life? I do not think so.
I would love to work part-time
in a few years, but the US benefits and labor structure disincentivizes this.
The biggest trap of all is health insurance, where good benefits are impossible for the average person to afford; yet nationalized healthcare is out of reach until 65.
Instead of this all-or-nothing approach; I wish Medicare phased-in gradually, with supplemental insurance covering the gaps.
How does someone die of overworking? At what point does one decide "fuck my health, I'll die for BigCorp"? And, where I'm going: a company will always ask as much work as possible from as few employees at possible. Up to what point is this the personal responsibility of the employee?
How much would you be willing to work if you'd have to pay rent, credits, take care that your wife and children get enough to eat? Also there's some bills because your wifes' car broke down and needed repair, the children need new clothes and there's this school trip coming up and also the roof is leaky and needs to be fixed which you can't do by yourself.
Long term short: While it's easy to judge from the outside, people will put their health in second place a lot of times if there are other problems.
Also - in Poland Amazon warehouses are known for paying well above the average in the areas they are in, with good benefits. Every single article about them in Polish press usually points this out - yeah you're working for a megacorp, but that megacorp consistently pays more than any other employer in the area for unskilled work.
I think his point is that employees better take care of themselves than trusting a for profit organisation to do the equal job.
It isn't only with Amazon, there are plenty of managers who will cut corners or leave aside common sense with regards to the safety of their team members. Company policies can put safe guards in place, but in the end it doesn't take a genius to go around them.
The obsession with amazon is likely due to the fact it's a very profitable company, in the end, profit or not, employees should take care of their well being, most places I worked had a few individuals who would destroy themselves , just with overwork. We can blame the authorities, or take our responsibilities. The bills and debt arguments, put that on society as a whole for having so many people in precarious situations.
But if you continue, you’re dead or get a bad health/psycho condition. I think that 1) people should not start what they cannot afford in some reasonable term (including cars, family, kids, etc; i.e. living on the edge), 2) societies should stop to welcome this life style on all levels. I have many examples around when people started their “life” thinking that it all will sort out later. It never did.
This all stems from the social hypocrisy about what you can or cannot do. We are living in cities, not in the woods, and sometimes we cannot use our basic rights without strings attached. Yes, start your family, rent a house, buy a car, go for it. And smile yes-sir to the smirking sociopath who wipes his dirt on you because you’re on his hook and there is no turning back. It’s like an enslaving conspiracy, but on a “nod to each other” level.
people will put their health in second place a lot of times if there are other problem
Only because there is no other way to live their life. They may not live it, or may live it like that. There is usually no third option for the masses, except for a few exceptions.
In general, it works like this: you notice a company is fucked up, and you leave. In theory, you could go to a competitor who offers better work conditions.
You don't go working in an Amazon warehouse if you have other options in life. It's for people who lost hope, in a way. According to the article, the family was very poor and the wife feels guilty he died trying to provide for her meds.
In Poland, there is a strong mentality of overworking yourself, especially when it comes to physical work. Sometimes colloquially referred to as "kultura zapierdolu". Basically, especially for older generations, if you don't come home from work exhausted you didn't work hard enough. And if you didn't work hard enough, you don't deserve to get paid.
Google has similarly bad business practices and beyond AWS and GCP there's Microsoft's Azure, which I don't think a lot of companies are keen on switching to.
Plus, most large companies care about profits. Not feelings or the death of a lowly worker. If you boycott the source you'll have to boycott the whole chain of things, and it'll have to be widespread and immediate for them to care.
I just don't see it happening. We're stuck with this timeline it seems :/
I'd say consumer boycott makes you feel better and you should partake in it if you want to keep your integrity.
Still it is not the way to change things:
"All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people’s rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That’s what
democracy was invented for!" -- Richard Stallman
I agree with stallman's spirit but it's just as nebulous as boycotting - the average person cannot form their own democracy in a way that would effect change.
Can you give some examples? Google don't run an online marketplace and they don't have huge warehouses or a a distribution network so I can't see how their business practices can be "similarly bad". I'm sure they do have bad business practices but I doubt they're in the realm of the inhumane conditions Amazon workers have to endure.
FYI: In Germany, a lot of Amazon workers are unionized already. There are nation-wide unions that are not workplace-specific, and if I remember correctly, Amazon workers in Germany were on strike at least once.
In Poland however, unions are often frowned upon because of Poland's past, although there are one or two small workers union that have been helping the warehouse employees.
Amazon is certainly worse than the average company domiciled in the US, but it is quantitatively and not qualitatively different. Capitalism requires employers to extract as much work out of employees as possible, lest competition overtake them.
No that is fatalistic. In the same way as Google and Facebook are leading the charge on Spyware-aaS, Amazon is leading the charge on crappy workplace conditions for warehouse and delivery workers.
does Walmart have similar problems with employees being forced to work to death? I thought it was mainly because Amazon leadership are your inhumane rationalist optimiser types.
These kind of problems are invisible from stratosphere.
Safety of employers should be a priority for employers, spending a time at work should be less risky for health than being at home. Even for potentially more dangerous tasks, the safety has to scale accordingly.
I can hear quite often that work conditions at warehouses are terrible. How it's on the the IT side? Do they have the same culture? Is the IT part somehow supporting all workers on Amazon? Because if people are not consolidated - the secondary treatment of other jobs will continue.
I feel sorry for his family and it shouldn't happen. Maybe Amazon conditions and procedures aren't good enough, but people should pay attention to their bodies telling them something is off. When you're 49 it's no longer rinse-repeat, you can't just continuously run your engine at 120%…
But you need to make money. Not everyone is in a position where they can afford taking unpaid time off or quit a job because it's unhealthy. It's the employers responsibility to make sure workers can handle the workload.
I wish Amazon employs 50% more workforce and then force cut working hours for workers to 8 hours / day. Aka, you can't do overtime even if you want to.
But may be they did it. Or the workers don't want it. Or something else. It's not like Amazon didn't think of it themselves.
I worked a string of temp jobs throughout college - usually via temp agencies. I too, did some similar gigs to Amazon warehouse.
Usually, both employee and employer want the overtime - more so for the employee, if the OT pay is attractive. When I worked night shifts in a mail sorting facility (11PM to 11AM), the OT pay was almost 100%
Employees want it because they can make more money without having to balance multiple gigs/jobs, employers because less employees = less paperwork and less people to manage.
And this is why regulation is needed. As long as employees want OT pay because otherwise they can't make a living, they will work (sometimes ridiculous) amounts of OT and companies will exploit that need of the workers. People having to work two full-time jobs or balancing "gig economy" modern slavery just to make rent? That only shows how broken the system is, especially when it comes to rents.
Fair wages and OT bans by law are the only way out - like in Germany, where you are not allowed to work more than 10 hours a day across all your jobs combined.
I don't agree with equating paid employment in a free society with slavery. I think that's distasteful rhetoric, however, the idea of a government imposing restriction on individual citizens' time to eradicate overtime, the only way for a substantial amount of people to get ahead in life, is closer to an inescapable situation than a busy minimum-wage job with overtime available.
> I don't agree with equating paid employment in a free society with slavery.
If people only have the choice between being exploited by Amazon in conditions that are beyond reasonable (e.g. having to piss in bottles, not getting lunch breaks), by "gig employers" shifting entrepreneurial risk towards employees (Uber, but also hospitality that doesn't pay minimum wage so people are depending on tips) or being homeless, then yes it is modern slavery.
Yes, and to add to your comment, in Germany the Employer is responsible for monitoring those 10h limits of its employees. If for example and employee would die in an accident due to falling asleep while driving after more than 10h of work, the employer can be held accountable.
Sadly, the titans of industry have become very focused on short time horizons.
Giving employees reasonable working hours, reasonable working conditions, and reasonable pay for the cost of living is trivially the right move if your ambition is to build a lasting monument of human accomplishment and a lasting legacy of human kinship and solidarity.
Well, at one time something like 20% of the deaths in Pittsburgh were happening in Carnegie's steel mills according to the Economist [0]. So it's nothing new, unfortunately. It seems to almost be a pre-condition for getting really really rich.
Hey, do you want to become the next In-N-Out Burger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-N-Out_Burger#Culture) or the next McDonald's? If you want to really reach for the stars (like Bezos is currently trying with Bue Origin), you can't let such trivialities like humane working conditions get in the way...
The last thing I wanted at 18 was not being able to earn 50 to 100% more an hour.
Also what your proposing is what the company did to everyone who didn’t work overtime but instead focused on working more than part time hours, so they would qualify for full time hours and thus benefits.
Work 2 months at 40 hrs per week? Great, have a month with no hours. Voila, now after 3 months your average hours per week is part time.
Yeah this was a union shop too, so don’t want to hear any nonsense from anyone about how great things would be if a union was skimming an additional 10% off the workers pay.
I wish people who weren’t doing the work would fuck right off with interfering with other peoples working relationships. Unions, mgmt, govt, workers comp, it’s all fucked and skims massively off people doing the work and towards the lifers.
Sorry if this comes off as a personal attack, but it brings me back to that life and the struggles everyone is going through. You feel fucked from every direction at a warehouse.
>they would qualify for full time hours and thus benefits.
This is not how stuff works in Poland. There's no difference between full-time and part-time benefits, instead, there's a difference between employment contract (UoP) contracting (UZ, UoD) and self-employment.
You can legally opt out of the working time limits in most professions, except for limited few like truck drivers. I'm yet to see an employment contract that doesn't have a clause for the opt out. I work as a programmer contracted for 37.5h/week but of course there's a clause in my contract to say I agree to work more "if needed"(never had to in my 7 years of work here, but still).
Interesting. Here it's company to company, you can have benefits part time, but most don't offer it as most part time jobs are low wage. (Less likely to have bennies)
Also, "benefits" mean very little at that level in Poland, since healthcare is state run - and shit, but equally shit.
Private healthcare is usually diagnostics only (also, dentistry and some "luxury" operations like LASIK).
Check your privilege. You got 50 to 100% more an hour for working overtime BECAUSE it was a union shop. Yes the union that you resent for 'skimming' was getting you a way more than 10% bump in every paycheck.
If it wasn't a union shop, then you would have been working overtime at the same hourly rate as regular hours.
This is what GP objected to - if there's no incentive for management not to demand excessive overtime, they do it all the time and burn people out. If there are overtime limits or statutory pay increases for overtime, they manage their resources properly.
At least here in the US, minimum 50% pay increase is literally federal law: "Nonexempt workers must be paid overtime pay at a rate of not less than one and one-half times their regular rates of pay after 40 hours of work in a workweek" [0].
Well that's what the union would say. We did this. You are welcome.
His point is that they are interfering with employer/employees relationship, and skim a percentage. One could argue the unions aren't getting the best deals in the long run, and skim a percentage on top. The amount of corruption those involved get tempted to participate in is significant, hard to know what we don't know.
What I observe is that more prestigious jobs get away without unions getting in the way. In tech, there is generally a distrust in political factions forming to supposedly fight for employees benefits. Perhaps well paid workers figured there is no need for fighting against well paying employers, for discrete reasons.
Amazon warehouse employees? If it's so bad, leave. It's just feeding the beast to accept the now well known conditions there.
> Amazon warehouse employees? If it's so bad, leave. It's just feeding the beast to accept the now well known conditions there.
Unfortunately, the current economic system comes with an air-tight protection from such dangerous ideas: if you don't work, you can't live. So, unless there is some place that deigns to offer better conditions than Amazon warehouses, your choices are to work in these conditions or just die.
> What I observe is that more prestigious jobs get away without unions getting in the way. In tech, there is generally a distrust in political factions forming to supposedly fight for employees benefits.
This happens more in newer industries, where unions are more actively discouraged from the get go. Older prestigious professions do tend to have unions, at least in my country. Dctors have unions. Actors and screen writers have unions. Magistrates (at least those working for the state - prosecutors, judges, public defenders) have unions. I think civil engineering is not unionized, but that is more of an exception.
Even more, some areas in tech are some of the most disfunctional working environments around, and unionization is becoming a hot topic. Look at the recent Activision Blizzard or Ubisoft or Riot Games scandals.
Unions are for sure not the silver bullet that will solve all problems, but just look at the different working conditions across countries and you will see that generally speaking, unions do lead to better working conditions and overall well-being of the employees. After all, that's literally their purpose and why they exist in the first place.
> I wish people who weren’t doing the work would fuck right off with interfering with other peoples working relationships. [..] You feel fucked from every direction at a warehouse.
It's precisely the POINT to interfere, because they cannot fend for themselves. It is literally the reason why unions were invented and why governments of pretty much all advanced nations choose to regulate work: There will always be those who have no choice but to accept the work that is given to them, and unless someone fends for them, they will be exploited.
Try to keep your own emotions out of it, and look at the raw numbers & statistics across countries. The patterns are evidently clear.
I think big corporations like Amazon should be more tightly regulated. They could easily afford cutting hours by 50% and quadrupling the pay at the same time, so workers wouldn't have to do overtime, but this is a exploitative and greed driven business. They also don't pay right amount of tax and because of that all workers are taxed more to make up for it.
Quick estimate: amazon retail had about about 8 billion in operating income for the six months ending in just [0] so estimate 16 billion a year. They also had 1,335,000 employees [0]. At least for the US, their starting pay is $18 an hour [1]. 18 * 40 * 48 is $34,560. If we assume 1 million of those are front line workers, just doubling their pay would increase their costs by 34 billion dollars putting them in the red by 18 billion dollars a year. Obviously pay varies by location so not a perfect estimate.
What? No they cannot. This is the document they report to investors, not the IRS, so it is global across all countries and subsidiaries. And their incentive is to report maximum profits to investors. What avoidance schemes and fake costs are you even thinking of?
Just like with ousting dictators, that would leave a power vacuum which will be filled ASAP by an equally evil corporation, since Amazon proved what one can get away with.
The solution is to legislate companies with despicable practices out of business, but that ship has sailed some time in the '70s -'80s when globalization and unscrupulous capitalism kicked into fifth gear.
Of course, and "obliterating" Amazon would still leave all the other corporations who behave similarly and the broken system they lay their foundation upon intact.
Still, it is fine to me to express frustration using a childish dream for revenge every once in a while.
The world has chosen to increasingly kneel to Billionaire CEO's who think pursuit of profit through over-working people is completely fine & dandy. This death can be directly attributed to Bezos who I believe is a well-adjusted sociopath.
It's so sad that only few hundreds kilometers west in Germany relatively interesting and high paid tech jobs at Amazon are available, and over here they advertise in city centers their warehouse jobs... happy, fulfilling, rewarding, young! Become a warehouse-kapo so consumers in Germany can receive their packages!
I'm from Poland and few years ago as a student I was working one night serving dinners in Wroclaw Amazon warehouse as a side job. Besides the fact that some people in night shifts were clearly under the influence and most were either really old, or really young, the whole thing looks like a prison. Motivational texts on the walls, bland colors, everyone was sad and depressed, metal detectors and security checks everywhere. I genuinely felt bad for people working there. There were a lot of stories that they count your steps to force you to work more but I don't know how much of these were true. Generally Amazon(warehouse) here attracts really the people who have nowhere else to go and is considered 'last resort' kind of job around here.
While I agree with most of your points, security checks are standard. Employee theft is a big issue in almost any warehouse, so searching employees after shifts is nothing unusual and doesn't tend to be a big hassle for most.
I get the vibe that you think Amazon treats Germany better. Amazon has warehouses in basically every country and treats their warehouse employees like crap in every country. Amazon as far as I know treats all of their employees like crap.
My point is rather that in Germany at least one can work on their tech stuff and in warehouses they experienced solid pushback by German unions. Meanwhile rich western investor in Poland? For a plastic bag of cash on the table, they can do literally anything and receive taxbreaks.
There is no culture of renting. After fall of communism people went into full capitalism mode but don't have the sophistication to invest into something more complicated than a mortgage and real estate. One gets 20-30 sqm studio for 450-600 eur/month. Basically hotel room with kitchen annex. I think Warsaw took over Berlin already.
Amazon still has to abide by the laws and regulations of countries they work in. So I wouldn't be surprised if workers in Germany are treated a lot better than they are in countries with weaker laws (not talking about Poland here, I don't know how they compare).
Not sure if they just slip by while not being in the spot light. Amazon repeatedly failed to follow COVID regulations in France, refused to reduce operations to a manageable point and instead opted to shut the affected warehouses down completely.
You do know, that there are 24 fulfillment centers in Germany alone and each one of them needs the same type of work, that is being done in each of 7 centers in Poland? Because your comment suggests that the hard work is being done only in Poland.
Working standards and labor laws are different in those countries,e.g. in Germany unions are pretty strong and warehouse workers are better protected (only 2 shifts are allowed), whereas in Poland those sweatshops run 24/7. Hourly pay for this job in PL is equal to €5.3/$6.2/£4.5.
Cheap workforce is the sole reason of Amazon's presence in PL (until very recent, they didn't even have a local domain) and the backbone of their logistics for Western Europe.
Because human beings have limits beyond which they break, even when they are desperate for money.
Low-regulation countries (or corrupt countries, which is equivalent for the corrupters) ignore those limits and achieve efficiency for the rich at the expense of the bodies of the poor.
Money can't fix this. Many young people think themselves indestructible and roll the dice (without even realizing) by ruining their health for money. This practice must simply be made illegal, except for the most dire of needs (e.g. a surgeon in the middle of an operation can't just clock out).
Just like you can't legally sell yourself into slavery or sell your organs, you shouldn't be allowed to sell your health away for a bigger buck like this; and businesses that rely on such practices for their business model should simply be closed down.
A lot of German amazon packages (esp warehousedeals but not exclusively) will be shipped from Poland though. It's simply cheaper for Amazon given the huge wage difference and the relatively short distance (<10h by truck from Western Poland to pretty much all of Germany).
There is solid line of their trucks on our east-west highways. Blocking the right lane at times. Almost as if one country was taking the most attention...
Rather culturally and historically aware dark joke (hint - American corporation "serving" Germans on Polish soil and funelling the real profits through some obscure arrangements). Give us something better this time please, we deserve it.
I feel like you're missing something in your historical awareness. Hint: it has something to do with the kapo comment and the comparison of places like Treblinka and Sobibor to an Amazon warehouse.
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> Sounds bad, but imagine the warehouse manager would've helped the guy and gotten COVID-19!
Isn't Amazon testing warehouse employees for COVID-19 whenever they enter their premises?
Nevertheless, unless Amazon treats their employees like utter crap, showing any symptom of COVID-19 would be grounds to just let them go on sick leave no questions asked. Instead, the newspiece states that the manager of the deceased was making him run laps.
Sure, but with the new Delta Plus® variant (+ false-negative tests + asymptomatic transmission) it's better to play it safe & keep your distance from other human resources.
It does sound horrible, especially when you (clearly didn't) read that the entire incident was likely avoidable had his line manager taken his visible symptoms seriously and not told him to continue the manual labour until it was too late.
Your desensitised hot take of 'well this stuff just happens' is appalling in a number of ways and is exactly the attitude that trickles down through businesses when it's someone else that's stuck at the thin edge of the wedge.
> It does sound horrible, especially when you (clearly didn't) read that the entire incident was likely avoidable had his line manager taken his visible symptoms seriously and not told him to continue the manual labour until it was too late.
I can't see that in article (and I'm native Polish speaker). Article says that man told manager about his symptoms and manager instantly walked with him to paramedical team, instead of calling them. People in article say that it was "culpable mistake".
Yes, it was a mistake, but it's unlikely that it resulted in death of that man.
Exactly this. I had so many colleagues that were always complaining to me about how they think our boss treated them unfair, and I always said "Don't tell me, just talk to the boss." There were two different managers who thought they need to scream at me, and both times I waited until they were finished screaming, and I just told them that if they would ever scream at me again I just turn around and go home immediately. They never screamed at me again but were continuing to treat some of my colleagues like shit and were still screaming at them for trivial reasons. People just need to understand that they need to stand up for themselves, and stop complaining to your colleagues or friends on how unfair life is, and that soon you will quit your job, this time for sure. :)
Yup. I got the you never come in on time talk after 5 years of not coming in on time and mentioning that it’s not my jam during the interview. Was told I’d be fired if I didn’t fix it.
2 weeks later after not coming in on time I handed in my notice, got yelled at. They asked for more notice, gave it to them, last day, they said it was alright to not come in on time.
I haven't worked in one owned by Amazon, but I've worked in a warehouse. As far as I know most of them are about 50C warmer than the ones I worked in, as far as I know, there's no 80kg amazon packages frozen at -25C so I'd say they have it pretty easy.
That warehouse certainly didn't have robots to bring us our packages for scanning by laser gun either.
Yeah, real statistics must be made. However this opinion is so universal and frequently voiced by the workers that not sharing it would be just as wrong as relying purely on anecdata.
The society here is not too divided. It's normal to meet, talk and drink beer with people of other occupations. Every time someone at a bar tells me they work at a warehouse, they will soon be raving about how much better things are thanks to Amazon. You can overhear these conversations at bus stops, at the doctor, etc.
An excellent example of missing the forest for the trees. The abominable working conditions in Amazon distribution centers is well documented. It is absolutely to be expected that they'll a) not be transparent about the number of such incidents and b) those conditions are (strongly) correlated with an increased rate of such conditions.
I know it sounds horrible, but people die during work, and it doesn't indicate any wrongdoing on any part. Highlighting individual cases is click baiting.
People do die at work quite often, but in this case there appears there'll be an inquest and investigation in to whether or not Amazon is at fault (From the article via Google Translate "Amazon is waiting for information from the prosecutor's office and the results of the investigation.").
We shouldn't assume Amazon aren't negligent just yet, just as we shouldn't assume they are. We don't know. Citing statistics on how many hours there are in a day isn't helpful.
He was experiencing shortness of breath with chest pain and his manager told him he has to walk long distance by himself to get help. Manager didn't have sympathy for him likely due to argument they had the previous day related to overworking – he was asking manager for getting more people to help as he complained it's physically impossible to do this job. His manager refused to help and he wanted to escalate it, he was supposed to talk to his manager's manager but didn't make it.
In general I consider HN to be a true cultural treasure and probably the richest forum on the Internet.
But as a person with a fair dose of the autism spectrum in the woodpile, I am nonetheless consistently unsettled by the inevitable nitpick argument that whatever dystopian trans-meta-corporate optimization that happened to wander into the spotlight today is in fact supported by such and such figures, and obviously we’re doing rigorous work here because we have links to web servers that send a little textual prose as an amuse bouche for the megabyte of JavaScript actively trying to defeat the already feeble attempts of our browser to send something less than our genome to some IP address somewhere.
Amazon fulfillment centers are what Dickens was talking about when Scrooge asked if there were any workhouses.
I’m not a financial accountant, but I gather that a balance sheet has a line on it called “goodwill”, that it is important to a company like Amazon, and likely something shareholders care about.
So being in the news for literally working people to death is quite possibly suboptimal for the shareholders.
on edit: evidently pointing out an egregious factual error which actually downplays the horrors of Victorian poverty by supposing a workhouse was something like a bad warehouse job gets the downvotes.
on edit 2: probably shouldn't have complained but was annoyed at the quick slapping I received.
“a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment.”
is not the direct superclass of an Amazon fulfillment center?
One click off the one you provided is Wikipedia’s take on a “total institution”:
“A total institution is a place of work and residence where a great number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.”
So as Futurama’s writers would say you are technically correct, the best kind of correct: even the fucking villains who ran Edwardian and Victorian Britain at least gave you lodging for your slavery-like labor that you were basically born into.
Retro is perpetual, what’s old is new again at all times. Bell bottoms here, feeding the poor to each other there. Pretty soon we’re vacationing on Mars.
>the infamous Victorian workhouse, an institution that the editor of the medical journal the Lancet claimed could kill 145,000 people every year
I'm pretty sure the workhouse was significantly worse than being employed at Amazon.
>gave you lodging for your slavery-like labor that you were basically born into.
this was in Poland, a country that being in Europe I suppose has a functioning welfare system. The workhouse was in effect the Victorian welfare system.
conditions in Amazon's warehouses are bad enough that hyperbole does not help in the fight against it.
Hiring the kind of people who hang out here to deploy heavy math and legal expertise to squeeze every last drop out of the vulnerable is exactly what Dickens was barking about.
Rich people have gotten a lot of mileage out of convincing everyone that they’re a temporarily impoverished millionaire. The body politic is starting to get wise to this hustle (again) and the last bastion of dumbass Ayn Rand “socialism for me, but not for thee” tripe seems to be the temporarily impoverished tech billionaires on HN.
What was worse about that poorly-lit box perfumed by long-chain polymers where you have to hold it until your assigned bathroom break and you’re timed down to the minute on repetitive, physically stressful tasks?
I don't know what denigrating web-devs has to do with whether or not "such and such figures" aka statistics is nit-picking or not. Maybe argue the point instead of lording over all of HN with vague insights.
Reading the translation, at no point did the guy ask to simply take sick leave. I mean a good manager should tell him to do that but at the end of the day you should look out for your own health.
People in Poland avoid sick leave due to cultural (downplaying illness), legal (sick leave is paid 80%) and financial reasons (certain employers will cut your bonus if take sick leave).
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Breaking the site guidelines like this will get you banned here, regardless of how bad another comment is or you feel it is. Maybe you don't feel you owe the other person better, but you certainly owe this community much better if you're participating in it. No more of this, please.
We've had to ask you this kind of thing several times before. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
As long as no one sees the underclass of the NWO, it doesn't matter right ?
Like how people can care for "animal rights" and "human rights" while still eating meat and supporting the destruction of "heathens" (ideological or otherwise).
- He was a water spider in an Amazon warehouse.
- On 5 Sep, 2021 he asked his team lead to assign extra help because he and his colleagues couldn't keep up with the amount of work. An argument between them ensued but some help was assigned at the end of the day.
- In the morning of 6 Sep, 2021 he felt stabbing in his chest and had difficulties breathing. He asked the team lead to call a medic (there were medical care worked employed by Amazon) but he refused and offered to walk him to the medic instead.
- He passed out on his way to the medic and never regained consciousness.
- An investigation was opened on 7 Sep, 2021.