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This article misses two key points: - The worker's family can still sue Amazon - Most OSHA fines aren't for accidents, there for "failure to abate" - this mea
by elil17 3y ago
This article misses two key points:
- The worker's family can still sue Amazon
- Most OSHA fines aren't for accidents, there for "failure to abate" - this means, if Amazon didn't implement safeguards to stop a similar accident from happening again, they could be fined $15,000 per day.
I do think OSHA fines are to low, but it makes sense to fine for failure to abate rather than accidents, especially when you think about smaller businesses - you don't want to take money away from a company before it has a chance to use that money to fix the issue.
- drewcoo 3y agoThe fine was issued by the state of Indiana. That's stated in the article and you can confirm by looking up further sources. OSHA is federal and under the US Dept of Labor. The state-level IOSHA is a part of the Indiana Dept of Labor. I have no idea why the article keeps mentioning OSHA. It clearly is not to show the disparity between state and federal enforcement. Maybe just to confuse comments on HN . . .
- elil17 3y agoI think that this is really confusing because IOSHA should only have authority over state and local government, not private workplaces.
- i_am_jl 3y agoIndiana's OSHA is one of the state plans that has authority over most private workplaces. https://www.osha.gov/stateplans/ https://www.osha.gov/stateplans/
- bradknowles 3y agoIMO, corporate fines like this should be structured in terms of percentages of gross annual revenue + total Market Cap + total gross assets. And start at integer percentages above 0%. Make them start at a number that the board will actually notice and want to actively avoid. So, if you're a trillion-dollar company, then the fines start at 1% of a trillion dollars, and goes up from there.
- henryfjordan 3y agoIf you only fine for failure to abate, then there's no reason to be proactive about safety.
- elil17 3y agoWell I do agree fines should be higher (both for failure to abate and for accidents). But I just think that failure to abate should still be higher
- gretch 3y agoUm yeah there is? Even the most ruthless cartoon capitalist knows that it’s bad to lose workers and then have to pay $ to train new ones. You at least have to stop the line for the day while the 1 guy who got hurt gets a replacement scheduled. It’s better if your factory operates smoothly. Not to mention hits to morale across the board.
- yongjik 3y agoHeh, if you believe your most ruthless cartoon capitalist would stop the line for a whole day just because a worker bee died, you haven't met actual ruthless capitalists.
- gretch 3y agoThey stop the line because they can’t just materialize a worker out of thin air, not because they feel sad. What exactly do you imagine happens?