25 ms·

Amazon hid its safety crisis

264 points by mcspecter 6y ago

davisr 6y ago
> The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard. This seems extraordinarily high. I wouldn't accept that risk. Makes me all the happier that I closed my Amazon account.
- Droobfest 6y ago
  I wonder if Amazon really skews that industry standard so they might even have way more than double the injuries of other warehouses
- Aperocky 6y ago
  The article defined serious injury as > those requiring days off or job restrictions. Meanwhile OSHA defined serious injury here: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1993-09-02 https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1993-... Exerpt: > 1 Impairment of the body in which part of the body is made functionally useless or is substantially reduced in efficiency on or off the job. Such impairment may be permanent or temporary, chronic or acute. Injuries involving such impairment would usually require treatment by a medical doctor. Examples of injuries which constitute such harm include: a Amputation (loss of all or part of a bodily appendage which includes the loss of bone). b Concussion. c Crushing (internal, even through skin surface may be intact). d Fracture (simple or compound). e Burns or scald, including electric and chemical burns. f Cut, laceration, or puncture involving significant bleeding and/or requiring suturing. The differences in standards (which the article does mention in passing, but in no details) is a potential differentiator.
  - sct202 6y ago
    There could be a mismatch with the national statistics, but the Amazon data has rates by year and warehouse type so the upward trend is still bad. I know at the factory/distribution center I worked at once upon a time, we tracked OSHA recordables / hour.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >The article defined serious injury as "those requiring days off or job restrictions." Given what we know about the working conditions there (threatened to be fired for any sick day, wearing adult diapers to avoid bathroom breaks, etc.) getting a medical day off in an Amazon wharehouse scenario means something like your leg was cut off or you're bleeding green blood...
- throwanem 6y ago
  Likewise. The real surprise has been how much I haven't regretted doing that - small business ecommerce turns out to be alive and well, despite all Amazon and I guess Walmart's efforts to the contrary.
Aperocky 6y ago
> The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common kind of warehouse, workers called pickers – who previously had to grab and scan about 100 items an hour – were expected to hit rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic fulfillment centers. The gist of the message above. It seems that robots made the process so efficient that workers were suffering from repetitive motion injuries. It also would seemed to be a matter of time that the packing/picking will be fully replaced by robots. At which time Amazon will no longer have a safety issue, but an entire separate political issue.
- BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
  They'd get rid of their union 'problems' and face a whole other crisis. But that wouldn't really stop Amazon and I'm sure bad PR isn't as expensive as having to pay out workers who got injured because they couldn't keep up with 'supreme' robotic workers.
- Animats 6y ago
  The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled Here's an old Kiva Robotics video that shows how picking works.[1] It's an utterly mindless job. An automated laser pointer points to the bin from which to take an object. A lighted button shows which box to put it in. A new bin then moves into position, and this goes on. Training time required is about 30 seconds. Amazon liked the system and bought Kiva. The company, not just the system. So anyone with basic eye-hand coordination can do picking, computers check that it's done right, there's no future in the job, and Amazon is trying to automate the picking process anyway. Classic assembly-line job. [1] https://youtu.be/CWNuaPE4DTc https://youtu.be/CWNuaPE4DTc
  - Klinky 6y ago
    Well, until it's fully automated, human safety is still important. I think the problem we have is that destroying a human body with mindless repetitive tasks is often still "cheaper" than engineering an automated solutions. It is simply cheaper to feed off desperation than to value human lives, and there is the engrained notion that humanity cannot be productive without putting humans into positions of desperation. This is a mindset issue that needs to eventually change.
causality0 6y ago
Amazon's abysmal safety standards are no secret. There's an expose about them every six months. So far nobody with the power to change anything cares. What would it take to get actual change? Even politicians who hate Amazon don't seem to care about their workers.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Maybe the public isn’t wrong and correctly ascertains that it’s exaggerated.
  - zepto 6y ago
    The public correctly ascertains things all the time, so this is a good assumption to make. /s
  - causality0 6y ago
    I believe the people who work there over "the public".
Judgmentality 6y ago
> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads. And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem. I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at this point. And I'd say the overwhelming evidence of them lying about safety reports is a pretty strong indicator of how their actions don't match their words. This obsession with growth is metaphorically cancer. It has to grow no matter what, until the once-healthy host has long since died and all that's left is an enormous tumor.
- ColanR 6y ago
  > And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem I don't get this Amazon hate. Weren't they the ones who originally came up with the idea for putting purchaser reviews with the product, and the 5-star rating system? It seems like their solution was to 'crowdsource' the problem. Now people have learned to game the system, but I buy plenty of electronics from amazon and from ebay, and I'm careful enough that I've never ended up with a counterfeit. Edit: I've noticed that ebay gives seller ratings, and amazon does product ratings. I guess that belies the different focus they each have. It would be cool (and probably a big improvement) if amazon put both product and seller ratings in equally prominent positions.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    purchaser reviews with the product No. Companies have been doing this for as long as there has been advertising and mail-order catalogs. Did Amazon do it on the web first? Unlikely, but cannot be proven. and the 5-star rating system Also unlikely. The five-star system has been around for at least a century. In digital form, I had it on one of the first web sites I built, around the same time that Amazon.com launched, and even that was cribbed from online review systems that existed before the web.
    - ColanR 6y ago
jinpan 6y ago
At the risk of defending a faceless megacorporation, I'm curious what injuries per package look like at Amazon vs "Industry Average". According to the article, productivity expectations per worker doubled with robotics, and Amazon has about double the injury rate per worker, so my super rough back of the envelope calculation says they should fare similarly on that metric. If the industry alternative takes twice as many workers to do the same job, ultimately leading to approximately the same number of injured workers, has Amazon really created a safety crisis?
- gorbypark 6y ago
  Yes, they have. It doesn’t matter if an employee is twice as efficient if their injury rate is twice as high. If you are going to work and have twice the risk of injury, that’s a very bad thing. This is about injuries per employee, not injuries per item picked. Theoretically, a system could be designed where all safety standards were ignored and productivity was n times more per employee, with lower injuries per item picked, but would result in astronomical injury rates. If you were an Amazon employee, would you want to go to work where there was a 1/10 chance per day you’d be injured? A 10x more efficient warehouse employee isn’t making 10x more money, so they are seeing increased risk for no personal gain.
rathel 6y ago
Speaking of Amazon trying to downplay its wrongs, I recall there was a post here that counted Amazon PR team at 400-odd people. But I could not find it. Are they so effective or have I Mandela'd myself and this did not happen?
tyingq 6y ago
The key soundbite: "33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard." Double the industry standard begs a real response and action plan.
gxon 6y ago
Manna continues to be prescient. https://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm https://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
zaroth 6y ago
> [I]n April 2019, Amazon contracted with a new clinic for its injured Colorado workers: Advanced Urgent Care & Occupational Medicine, a local operation that promoted itself online as “OSHA-Sensitive.” > According to the Advanced website, Julie Parsons, then its occupational medicine medical director, believed in “treating injuries such that they are not OSHA recordable, if possible.” > A nurse practitioner who worked at the clinic said she dreaded seeing Amazon patients because she didn’t think she would be able to treat them appropriately. She said she remembers an Amazon worker who came to the clinic in a lot of pain from a wrist injury, crying and asking, “Can’t you do something?” > “I’m really sorry,” the nurse practitioner recalled telling her. “There’s really not a whole lot I can offer you right now.” Is there a RICO-equivalent to medical malpractice? This is conspiracy and fraud, aside from what should be a blistering class action lawsuit. Part of the reason I don't think we should tamp down too hard on a lawfirm's share of monetary damages is because there should be large (well-funded) firms who would salivate to take on such a case against Amazon, even if it could take 10 years to go through, even if it might fail in the end.
zaroth 6y ago
The article takes aim at Bezos's famous "14 Leadership Principles" [1] and I think very wisely so. These principles are severely lacking. The word "ethic" does not appear. Even the bullet point devoted to employees is framed entirely around employee output ("Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion."). > Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Read this in the context of their current behavior around factory workers to understand how sick the mindset truly is. Leaders should have relentlessly high standards for themselves. They should not expect humans to perform manual labor at super-human levels. That's called abuse. [1] - https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles
PandaRider 6y ago
Tim Bray predicted it! [0] > Certain (not all) Amazon warehouses seem to have per-employee injury rates that are significantly higher than the industry average, as in twice as high or more. Apparent reason: It’s not they’re actually dangerous places to work, it’s just that they’ve maximized efficiency and reduced waste to the point where people are picking and packing and shipping every minute they’re working, never stopping. And a certain proportion of human bodies simply can’t manage that. They break down under pressure. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809291

264 points by mcspecter 6y ago

> The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard. This seems extraordinarily high. I wouldn't accept that risk. Makes me all the happier that I closed my Amazon account.

Droobfest 6y ago
I wonder if Amazon really skews that industry standard so they might even have way more than double the injuries of other warehouses
Aperocky 6y ago
The article defined serious injury as > those requiring days off or job restrictions. Meanwhile OSHA defined serious injury here: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1993-09-02 https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1993-... Exerpt: > 1 Impairment of the body in which part of the body is made functionally useless or is substantially reduced in efficiency on or off the job. Such impairment may be permanent or temporary, chronic or acute. Injuries involving such impairment would usually require treatment by a medical doctor. Examples of injuries which constitute such harm include: a Amputation (loss of all or part of a bodily appendage which includes the loss of bone). b Concussion. c Crushing (internal, even through skin surface may be intact). d Fracture (simple or compound). e Burns or scald, including electric and chemical burns. f Cut, laceration, or puncture involving significant bleeding and/or requiring suturing. The differences in standards (which the article does mention in passing, but in no details) is a potential differentiator.
- sct202 6y ago
  There could be a mismatch with the national statistics, but the Amazon data has rates by year and warehouse type so the upward trend is still bad. I know at the factory/distribution center I worked at once upon a time, we tracked OSHA recordables / hour.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >The article defined serious injury as "those requiring days off or job restrictions." Given what we know about the working conditions there (threatened to be fired for any sick day, wearing adult diapers to avoid bathroom breaks, etc.) getting a medical day off in an Amazon wharehouse scenario means something like your leg was cut off or you're bleeding green blood...
throwanem 6y ago
Likewise. The real surprise has been how much I haven't regretted doing that - small business ecommerce turns out to be alive and well, despite all Amazon and I guess Walmart's efforts to the contrary.

Aperocky 6y ago

> The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common kind of warehouse, workers called pickers – who previously had to grab and scan about 100 items an hour – were expected to hit rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic fulfillment centers. The gist of the message above. It seems that robots made the process so efficient that workers were suffering from repetitive motion injuries. It also would seemed to be a matter of time that the packing/picking will be fully replaced by robots. At which time Amazon will no longer have a safety issue, but an entire separate political issue.

BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
They'd get rid of their union 'problems' and face a whole other crisis. But that wouldn't really stop Amazon and I'm sure bad PR isn't as expensive as having to pay out workers who got injured because they couldn't keep up with 'supreme' robotic workers.
Animats 6y ago
The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled Here's an old Kiva Robotics video that shows how picking works.[1] It's an utterly mindless job. An automated laser pointer points to the bin from which to take an object. A lighted button shows which box to put it in. A new bin then moves into position, and this goes on. Training time required is about 30 seconds. Amazon liked the system and bought Kiva. The company, not just the system. So anyone with basic eye-hand coordination can do picking, computers check that it's done right, there's no future in the job, and Amazon is trying to automate the picking process anyway. Classic assembly-line job. [1] https://youtu.be/CWNuaPE4DTc https://youtu.be/CWNuaPE4DTc
- Klinky 6y ago
  Well, until it's fully automated, human safety is still important. I think the problem we have is that destroying a human body with mindless repetitive tasks is often still "cheaper" than engineering an automated solutions. It is simply cheaper to feed off desperation than to value human lives, and there is the engrained notion that humanity cannot be productive without putting humans into positions of desperation. This is a mindset issue that needs to eventually change.

causality0 6y ago

Amazon's abysmal safety standards are no secret. There's an expose about them every six months. So far nobody with the power to change anything cares. What would it take to get actual change? Even politicians who hate Amazon don't seem to care about their workers.

an_opabinia 6y ago
Maybe the public isn’t wrong and correctly ascertains that it’s exaggerated.
- zepto 6y ago
  The public correctly ascertains things all the time, so this is a good assumption to make. /s
- causality0 6y ago
  I believe the people who work there over "the public".

Judgmentality 6y ago

> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads. And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem. I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at this point. And I'd say the overwhelming evidence of them lying about safety reports is a pretty strong indicator of how their actions don't match their words. This obsession with growth is metaphorically cancer. It has to grow no matter what, until the once-healthy host has long since died and all that's left is an enormous tumor.

ColanR 6y ago
> And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem I don't get this Amazon hate. Weren't they the ones who originally came up with the idea for putting purchaser reviews with the product, and the 5-star rating system? It seems like their solution was to 'crowdsource' the problem. Now people have learned to game the system, but I buy plenty of electronics from amazon and from ebay, and I'm careful enough that I've never ended up with a counterfeit. Edit: I've noticed that ebay gives seller ratings, and amazon does product ratings. I guess that belies the different focus they each have. It would be cool (and probably a big improvement) if amazon put both product and seller ratings in equally prominent positions.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  purchaser reviews with the product No. Companies have been doing this for as long as there has been advertising and mail-order catalogs. Did Amazon do it on the web first? Unlikely, but cannot be proven. and the 5-star rating system Also unlikely. The five-star system has been around for at least a century. In digital form, I had it on one of the first web sites I built, around the same time that Amazon.com launched, and even that was cribbed from online review systems that existed before the web.
  - ColanR 6y ago

jinpan 6y ago

At the risk of defending a faceless megacorporation, I'm curious what injuries per package look like at Amazon vs "Industry Average". According to the article, productivity expectations per worker doubled with robotics, and Amazon has about double the injury rate per worker, so my super rough back of the envelope calculation says they should fare similarly on that metric. If the industry alternative takes twice as many workers to do the same job, ultimately leading to approximately the same number of injured workers, has Amazon really created a safety crisis?

gorbypark 6y ago
Yes, they have. It doesn’t matter if an employee is twice as efficient if their injury rate is twice as high. If you are going to work and have twice the risk of injury, that’s a very bad thing. This is about injuries per employee, not injuries per item picked. Theoretically, a system could be designed where all safety standards were ignored and productivity was n times more per employee, with lower injuries per item picked, but would result in astronomical injury rates. If you were an Amazon employee, would you want to go to work where there was a 1/10 chance per day you’d be injured? A 10x more efficient warehouse employee isn’t making 10x more money, so they are seeing increased risk for no personal gain.

rathel 6y ago

Speaking of Amazon trying to downplay its wrongs, I recall there was a post here that counted Amazon PR team at 400-odd people. But I could not find it. Are they so effective or have I Mandela'd myself and this did not happen?

tyingq 6y ago

The key soundbite: "33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard." Double the industry standard begs a real response and action plan.

gxon 6y ago

Manna continues to be prescient. https://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm https://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

zaroth 6y ago

> [I]n April 2019, Amazon contracted with a new clinic for its injured Colorado workers: Advanced Urgent Care & Occupational Medicine, a local operation that promoted itself online as “OSHA-Sensitive.” > According to the Advanced website, Julie Parsons, then its occupational medicine medical director, believed in “treating injuries such that they are not OSHA recordable, if possible.” > A nurse practitioner who worked at the clinic said she dreaded seeing Amazon patients because she didn’t think she would be able to treat them appropriately. She said she remembers an Amazon worker who came to the clinic in a lot of pain from a wrist injury, crying and asking, “Can’t you do something?” > “I’m really sorry,” the nurse practitioner recalled telling her. “There’s really not a whole lot I can offer you right now.” Is there a RICO-equivalent to medical malpractice? This is conspiracy and fraud, aside from what should be a blistering class action lawsuit. Part of the reason I don't think we should tamp down too hard on a lawfirm's share of monetary damages is because there should be large (well-funded) firms who would salivate to take on such a case against Amazon, even if it could take 10 years to go through, even if it might fail in the end.

zaroth 6y ago

The article takes aim at Bezos's famous "14 Leadership Principles" [1] and I think very wisely so. These principles are severely lacking. The word "ethic" does not appear. Even the bullet point devoted to employees is framed entirely around employee output ("Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion."). > Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Read this in the context of their current behavior around factory workers to understand how sick the mindset truly is. Leaders should have relentlessly high standards for themselves. They should not expect humans to perform manual labor at super-human levels. That's called abuse. [1] - https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles

PandaRider 6y ago

Tim Bray predicted it! [0] > Certain (not all) Amazon warehouses seem to have per-employee injury rates that are significantly higher than the industry average, as in twice as high or more. Apparent reason: It’s not they’re actually dangerous places to work, it’s just that they’ve maximized efficiency and reduced waste to the point where people are picking and packing and shipping every minute they’re working, never stopping. And a certain proportion of human bodies simply can’t manage that. They break down under pressure. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23809291