by Mark E Andersen, Daily Kos Labor
When it comes to Amazon's respect for its workers' safety, let's start here:
[…] a warehouse employee contacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on June 2 to report that the heat index in the warehouse had reached 102 degrees, and that 15 workers had collapsed. The employee also said workers who were sent home because of the heat received disciplinary points.
At what point does a company think they have a problem? Now, I am not expecting a warehouse to be air-conditioned to a comfortable 75 degrees. But 102? That is acceptable? Even when I was in the Army, work stopped on post when heat and humidity combined to a certain level.
The Morning Call, a daily newspaper in Allentown, Pa., delivered a grim picture last weekend about what it is like to work in the local Amazon warehouse, sorting material for delivery to millions of eager customers. In eastern Pennsylvania, like just about everywhere else, jobs are lacking, and Amazon is one of the few places that is hiring. Many workers are brought on by a staffing company as temporary workers ("Are you interested in working in a fun, fast-paced atmosphere earning up to $12.25 per hour?" the ad asks.) This transient status gives them little incentive to complain, even as the heat boiled upward over the summer. The result was an environment that, one employee told the paper, resembled "working in a convection oven while blow-drying your hair."
Amazon could presumably afford to hire permanent workers; however, why pay a worker and provide benefits? That would just cut into profits. Heaven forbid profits get cut in any way.
Eight days later [...] an emergency room doctor at a local hospital saw enough Amazon employees suffering from heat-related injuries to call OSHA and report "an unsafe environment."So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May […] that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer. About 15 people were taken to hospitals, while 20 or 30 more were treated right there […]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration "investigated conditions at the warehouse, [and] told Amazon that the way the warehouse was run had 'the potential to adversely impact' employee safety and health." Really, it took OSHA to tell them that? I would think the fact that people were passing out and that ambulances had to be on station would have been the first clue!
This type of work environment is exactly why unions are necessary. I hope a union somewhere is looking at Amazon’s warehouse and planning on organizing the workers.
Oh, and to show what is really important, the article where I saw this story ran with this to close:
Investors were undaunted; in the challenging Internet economy, this is the exact way they want companies to be run. On a down day for the market, the retailer's stock rose $2.39 on Monday to a new high of $241.69, giving Amazon a market value of $110 billion.
People are collapsing on the warehouse floor from heat exhaustion and we get a paragraph on how this is not impacting the stock price … (I will stop there before I run with words that I won’t let my son say).
I highly recommend that you read the entire article at The Morning Call. This is not just about a few hot days in a warehouse. This is about deplorable treatment of employees.
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