13 ms·

Amazon warehouse employee in Poland dies at work

274 points by nathell 5y ago

Fckd 5y ago
i reduced buying from amazon drasticly before. after reading this i do not think i can ever buy anything from amazon
- alimbada 5y ago
  It's a shame people don't think like this when it comes to AWS though. That's where the bulk of their profits come from after all.
  - Fckd 5y ago
    I will move my apps out of AWS slowly within the next 6 months
  - LukeEF 5y ago
    No Netflix, no Disney plus, no HBO... Whatever about paying 10% more for a plastic rake, that's a bridge too far!
  - junon 5y ago
    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 :/
    - alimbada 5y ago
      > Google has similarly bad business practices 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.
    - praptak 5y ago
      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
      - junon 5y ago
        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.
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  The company where you purchase stuff probably also has deaths at workplace, but it doesn’t get into news.
- Emma_Goldman 5y ago
  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.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    But the size of Amazon amplifies the inherent problem and makes the whole thing a caricature of normal work conditions.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      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.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    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.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  If anything is to change, individual consumer action won't do it; the workers would need to unionise.
  - marchewkowa 5y ago
    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.
wtk 5y ago
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%…
- dx034 5y ago
  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.
YounesDz 5y ago
Died at work or died out of work?
durnygbur 5y ago
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!
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  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.
  - durnygbur 5y ago
    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.
    - eafkuor 5y ago
      > My point is rather that in Germany at least one can work on their tech stuff I'd bet Amazon tech workers in Gdańsk and Warsaw have more purchasing power than their German counterparts
      - roguas 5y ago
        Kinda. Germany is not famous for high salaries in tech. This wouldnt apply for Switzerland, UK, Netherlands etc.
      - durnygbur 5y ago
        iPhones and BMWs are more expensive in Poland than in Germany, potato is cheaper though...
wyclif 5y ago
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.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  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.
tester34 5y ago
Google Translator partly: >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
habibur 5y ago
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.
- _3u10 5y ago
  Have you ever worked in a warehouse? 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.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    >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.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      There are also legal limits on working time, although it's not clear to me which would apply to a warehouse worker. https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/legislation/poland-working-time-flexibility https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/legis...
Ginden 5y ago
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. For example, Amazon has 950k employees in USA. Among Americans aged 45-54, 80 people per 100k die each year due to cardiac reasons. If 10% of Amazon workers are 45-54, and Amazon doesn't employ anyone over 54, at least 76 Amazon workers will die due to cardiac reasons. 1/3 of cardiac deaths occur suddenly. If average worker spends 40 hours per week in work (23% of time), 75 * 1/3 * 23% = around 6 Amazon employees in US will die in work each year, without any wrongdoing on any side. Moreover, poor people are at significantly increases risk of sudden cardiac arrest - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193117/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193117/ This may or may not be related to work conditions (though, I suspect rather combination lifestyle and healthcare access). Though, physical labor is associated with increased early mortality in men, but causes aren't clear (I suspect it's lifestyle, because women doesn't display such correlation). https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/20/1320 https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/20/1320
- AndyMcConachie 5y ago
  Go fuck yourself.
  - dang 5y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- corobo 5y ago
  Amazon's PR team got here quick Did you miss the part where he was asked to continue by a manager despite being unable to breathe? Pushing people to breaking point makes them break
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gregnavis 5y ago
Quick summary for those who can't read Polish: - 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.
- fhaldridge7 5y ago
  What's a water spider?
  - lqet 5y ago
    I found this: https://www.flexpipeinc.com/ca_en/role_of_waterspider/ https://www.flexpipeinc.com/ca_en/role_of_waterspider/ > 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.
  - GaryTang 5y ago
    It’s the only species of spider known to live entirely underwater.
  - grn 5y ago
    According to https://kanbantool.com/kanban-guide/water-spider https://kanbantool.com/kanban-guide/water-spider: > 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.
  - okl 5y ago
    "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." https://www.shmula.com/what-is-the-role-of-the-waterspider-in-lean-manufacturing/22565/ https://www.shmula.com/what-is-the-role-of-the-waterspider-i...
charbonneau 5y ago
Sounds bad, but imagine the warehouse manager would've helped the guy and gotten COVID-19! Can't risk that!
- nuerow 5y ago
  > 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.
  - charbonneau 5y ago
    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.
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > Sure, but with the new Delta Plus® (...) Nonsense. All it takes is checking temperature or self-reporting symptoms.
- dang 5y ago
  We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political/ideological battle and for posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments. None of that is what HN is for—it's for the opposite of those things. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
trzeci 5y ago
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.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > These kind of problems are invisible from stratosphere. Are they? I'd say it is common knowledge Amazon treat their workers really bad.
marchewkowa 5y ago
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. A similar case from Amazon, where the worker was lying unconscious for 20 minutes before receiving help (he died): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-warehouse-worker-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-wa... 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.
- krageon 5y ago
  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.
  - 9387367 5y ago
    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. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/world/europe/amazon-to-investigate-claims-of-worker-intimidation-at-german-centers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/world/europe/amazon-to-in...
FrankZappa42 5y ago
This is terrible.
vadfa 5y ago
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?
- martin_a 5y ago
  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.
  - hirako2000 5y ago
    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.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    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.
  - 5y ago
lenkite 5y ago
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.
- another_story 5y ago
  It does seem that to “get ahead” in this world it helps to have sociopathic tendencies.
j7ake 5y ago
So in these situations, is the leader responsible for the death of the employee? What kind of consequences are there for this type of behavior?
unityByFreedom 5y ago
For context, Amazon employs 950,000 people in the US and 1.3 million globally.
theragra 5y ago
Story time! 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.
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>Manager tells him: "You can either start work, or you can go now, but then, don't come tomorrow". So, he did exactly that. If he was employeed full time and been there for more than 2 years, then that's literally illegal.
  - maybeOneDay 5y ago
    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.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      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.
      - mattmanser 5y ago
        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
hehetrthrthrjn 5y ago
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"?
- Tade0 5y ago
  The boogeyman is real in Poland. We're some of the most overworked nations in the EU and have a culture of glorying this.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    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.
- christkv 5y ago
  I imagine there are some physical markers. The stress hormone cortisol might be used to help diagnose it. Sleep problems aswell.
StreamBright 5y ago
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.
- nobodyandproud 5y ago
  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.
thoiu4o3i434 5y ago
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).

274 points by nathell 5y ago

Fckd 5y ago

i reduced buying from amazon drasticly before. after reading this i do not think i can ever buy anything from amazon

alimbada 5y ago
It's a shame people don't think like this when it comes to AWS though. That's where the bulk of their profits come from after all.
- Fckd 5y ago
  I will move my apps out of AWS slowly within the next 6 months
- LukeEF 5y ago
  No Netflix, no Disney plus, no HBO... Whatever about paying 10% more for a plastic rake, that's a bridge too far!
- junon 5y ago
  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 :/
  - alimbada 5y ago
    > Google has similarly bad business practices 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.
  - praptak 5y ago
    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
    - junon 5y ago
      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.
asteroidbelt 5y ago
The company where you purchase stuff probably also has deaths at workplace, but it doesn’t get into news.
Emma_Goldman 5y ago
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.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  But the size of Amazon amplifies the inherent problem and makes the whole thing a caricature of normal work conditions.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    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.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  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.
beaconstudios 5y ago
If anything is to change, individual consumer action won't do it; the workers would need to unionise.
- marchewkowa 5y ago
  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.

wtk 5y ago

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%…

dx034 5y ago
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.

YounesDz 5y ago

Died at work or died out of work?

durnygbur 5y ago

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!

that_guy_iain 5y ago
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.
- durnygbur 5y ago
  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.
  - eafkuor 5y ago
    > My point is rather that in Germany at least one can work on their tech stuff I'd bet Amazon tech workers in Gdańsk and Warsaw have more purchasing power than their German counterparts
    - roguas 5y ago
      Kinda. Germany is not famous for high salaries in tech. This wouldnt apply for Switzerland, UK, Netherlands etc.
    - durnygbur 5y ago
      iPhones and BMWs are more expensive in Poland than in Germany, potato is cheaper though...

wyclif 5y ago

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.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
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.

tester34 5y ago

Google Translator partly: >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

habibur 5y ago

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.

_3u10 5y ago
Have you ever worked in a warehouse? 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.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  >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.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    There are also legal limits on working time, although it's not clear to me which would apply to a warehouse worker. https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/legislation/poland-working-time-flexibility https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/legis...

Ginden 5y ago

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. For example, Amazon has 950k employees in USA. Among Americans aged 45-54, 80 people per 100k die each year due to cardiac reasons. If 10% of Amazon workers are 45-54, and Amazon doesn't employ anyone over 54, at least 76 Amazon workers will die due to cardiac reasons. 1/3 of cardiac deaths occur suddenly. If average worker spends 40 hours per week in work (23% of time), 75 * 1/3 * 23% = around 6 Amazon employees in US will die in work each year, without any wrongdoing on any side. Moreover, poor people are at significantly increases risk of sudden cardiac arrest - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193117/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193117/ This may or may not be related to work conditions (though, I suspect rather combination lifestyle and healthcare access). Though, physical labor is associated with increased early mortality in men, but causes aren't clear (I suspect it's lifestyle, because women doesn't display such correlation). https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/20/1320 https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/52/20/1320

AndyMcConachie 5y ago
Go fuck yourself.
- dang 5y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
corobo 5y ago
Amazon's PR team got here quick Did you miss the part where he was asked to continue by a manager despite being unable to breathe? Pushing people to breaking point makes them break

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gregnavis 5y ago

Quick summary for those who can't read Polish: - 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.

fhaldridge7 5y ago
What's a water spider?
- lqet 5y ago
  I found this: https://www.flexpipeinc.com/ca_en/role_of_waterspider/ https://www.flexpipeinc.com/ca_en/role_of_waterspider/ > 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.
- GaryTang 5y ago
  It’s the only species of spider known to live entirely underwater.
- grn 5y ago
  According to https://kanbantool.com/kanban-guide/water-spider https://kanbantool.com/kanban-guide/water-spider: > 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.
- okl 5y ago
  "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." https://www.shmula.com/what-is-the-role-of-the-waterspider-in-lean-manufacturing/22565/ https://www.shmula.com/what-is-the-role-of-the-waterspider-i...

charbonneau 5y ago

Sounds bad, but imagine the warehouse manager would've helped the guy and gotten COVID-19! Can't risk that!

nuerow 5y ago
> 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.
- charbonneau 5y ago
  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.
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > Sure, but with the new Delta Plus® (...) Nonsense. All it takes is checking temperature or self-reporting symptoms.
dang 5y ago
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political/ideological battle and for posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments. None of that is what HN is for—it's for the opposite of those things. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

trzeci 5y ago

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.

rightbyte 5y ago
> These kind of problems are invisible from stratosphere. Are they? I'd say it is common knowledge Amazon treat their workers really bad.

marchewkowa 5y ago

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. A similar case from Amazon, where the worker was lying unconscious for 20 minutes before receiving help (he died): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-warehouse-worker-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-wa... 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.

krageon 5y ago
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.
- 9387367 5y ago
  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. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/world/europe/amazon-to-investigate-claims-of-worker-intimidation-at-german-centers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/world/europe/amazon-to-in...

FrankZappa42 5y ago

This is terrible.

vadfa 5y ago

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?

martin_a 5y ago
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.
- hirako2000 5y ago
  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.
- gambiting 5y ago
  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.
- 5y ago

lenkite 5y ago

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.

another_story 5y ago
It does seem that to “get ahead” in this world it helps to have sociopathic tendencies.

j7ake 5y ago

So in these situations, is the leader responsible for the death of the employee? What kind of consequences are there for this type of behavior?

unityByFreedom 5y ago

For context, Amazon employs 950,000 people in the US and 1.3 million globally.

theragra 5y ago

Story time! 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.

gambiting 5y ago
>>Manager tells him: "You can either start work, or you can go now, but then, don't come tomorrow". So, he did exactly that. If he was employeed full time and been there for more than 2 years, then that's literally illegal.
- maybeOneDay 5y ago
  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.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    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.
    - mattmanser 5y ago
      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

hehetrthrthrjn 5y ago

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"?

Tade0 5y ago
The boogeyman is real in Poland. We're some of the most overworked nations in the EU and have a culture of glorying this.
- xtracto 5y ago
  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.
christkv 5y ago
I imagine there are some physical markers. The stress hormone cortisol might be used to help diagnose it. Sleep problems aswell.

StreamBright 5y ago

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.

nobodyandproud 5y ago
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.

thoiu4o3i434 5y ago

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).