Amazon hired private detectives to spy on injured worker | Hacker News Reader

Amazon hired private detectives to spy on injured worker

wsws.org

102 pointsJerry251 comments

Former Workers Comp claim examiner here.

Every Workers' compensation insurance company hires private investigators to make sure the person is really injured and not working another job while collecting. Sounds like the private investigative company overstepped their bounds by physically assaulting the worker, but otherwise this is SOP.

Worth noting - Amazon has nothing to do with this. They simply pay premiums for Sedgewick to administer the claims. The employer typically doesn't tell the insurer to go after the workers, since in this case it is Sedgewick who's footing the bill.

> Worth noting - Amazon has nothing to do with this. They simply pay premiums for Sedgewick to administer the claims. The employer typically doesn't tell the insurer to go after the workers, since in this case it is Sedgewick who's footing the bill.

The most anyone can really expect of them is that they consider other providers, or hold their existing providers to a higher standard; and that is almost certainly what they are going to do.

I mean with all this publicity they will probably be switching providers or sending in a complaint to Sedgewick, but they aren't micromanaging carpal tunnel workers comp claims that make up 1/100000th of their revenue.

Are there incentives for discovering a claim as fraudulent -- or do they just get paid by the hour, with certain standards that must be met, and that's it?

When they were choosing a claims management provider, they surely took care to choose one that aligns with their values. So this at least reflects poorly on Amazon's choices at that time.

You expect Amazon to interview insurance companies and reject any which answer in the affirmative to "do you follow industry standards with regard to investigating claims"?

> Amazon has nothing to do with this

Amazon surely incentivizes Sedgewick to reduce costs. Just like Amazon micro-manages every other warehouse aspect to wring out maximum efficiency.

> Amazon has nothing to do with this. They simply pay premiums for Sedgewick to administer the claims.

Amazon chooses to employ Sedgewick. When they learn of this kind of abusive behavior, they can switch insurers, or hell just threaten to switch. Amazon has all the leverage here, to abdicate them of all responsibility is absurd.

You are vastly understating Amazon's role here. Sedgwick is an administrator (TPA), not an insurer. Amazon is big enough that they will be self-insured for workers' comp claims. It's Amazon's money on the line for claims, not Sedgwick's, so Sedgwick will do whatever Amazon tells them to do for claim processing even if it was reckless and stupid.

> Worth noting - Amazon has nothing to do with this

Oh but article saying "Socialist party website claims investigator for $INSURANCE_COMPANY_NOBODY_KNOWS overstepped their bounds by touching someone's hand" is not going to gain as much clicks as fashionable Amazon-bashing! No chance to get to HN either.

While the optics aren't great, I think this is the kind of thing we just have to accept as a society without single-payer healthcare. There's a huge amount of worker's comp fraud. Without some pushback in the system, there would be a lot more. And worker's comp insurance is already very expensive (at least, here in CA).

Also: We're getting just one side of the story here.

For what it's worth, this happens where there's single payer health care too:

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/06/16/workplace_safety...

For context, WSIB is a government agency here in Ontario:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_Safety_%26_Insuran...

Hiring PIs to prevent workers' comp fraud seems like a very normal and expected thing to do.

It seems like the ones in this case might have overstepped their bounds, though.

Canada really doesn't have a single-payer system though. If you're injured at work you'll receive far better care than if you sustain the same injuries at home.

Even the government investigates disability fraud.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robinseatonjefferson/2018/09/27...

Can you cite your claim that there is a huge amount of worker's comp fraud? I'd like to see the data. Specifically the amount of claims that end up fradulent.

You're right to push back on this. My wife works in the California system. As with anything, fraud does exist throughout it -- including employers, doctors, and law firms...not just applicants. However if you looked at the legitimately injured who were poorly treated and compared it with the rare ones who faked it, you would probably be astonished.

But no I have not data.

The reason why I push back against claims like this is usually because the evidence is either all anecdotal or the data proves the opposite

For example, there are claims that welfare fraud is widespread, yet the data seems to prove the opposite from what I've read. We should not be making policy nor allow companies to invade our privacy over unsubstantial amounts of fraudulent behavior. All that does is encourage companies to go deeper and deeper into paranoid behavior.

I agree, and I would go further: I think the idea that any human system can occur without fraud is ridiculous. People who claim to believe that systems should exist fraud-free often want to demolish those systems for other reasons.

Simply googling "workers comp fraud statistics", the first hit says 1-2% of all claims are fraudulent.

You can detect the disease by looking for the antibodies. As the top commenter (former examiner) pointed out, it's common for insurers to hire private detectives to investigate claims. That's a large expense that they wouldn't undertake without a good economic reason.

First off, I am tired of people using the 'just Google it' argument. That is not a replacement for citations when someone asks you to see data and I insist that you and anyone using that argument stop. Google tailors searches based on the user, location etc and without actual citations it is incredibly difficult to assess the credibility of one's argument. If you had the time to Google your own claim, then you had the opportunity to actually cite them in your response.

And second, 1-2% is such a low amount according to your claims that I absolutely do not believe it warrents invading someone's privacy and harassing them, full stop.

I thought the general level of workers comp fraud was well understood, and it doesn't take much googling to find it.

It sounds like the point of controversy is not sourcing, but the 1-2% figure.

That 1-2% figure is the level of fraud given the current amount of privacy invasion and harassment, including the story as posted. Less harassment, more fraud; more harassment, less fraud. "full stop"

If you think 1-2% is insignificant, I don't know what to say. By comparison, 0.037% of card-present transactions were fraudulent in 2012. That number was alarming enough it inspired switching all of our (USA) infrastructure to a chip-based system, and even that is generally not thought adequate. 1-2% is a large amount of fraud. If you have that amount of fraud on your merchant account, banks will generally shut you down.

Why do you think single payer would stop us from preventing fraud? Btw this is done in single payer countries as well.

What this have to do with single-payer? Under single-payer system, there would not be worker comp fraud? Or it won't be investigated, because who cares, it's other people's tax money? I am not sure what your point was here. As long as disability/worker comp fraud happens (and it happens, a lot), it would be investigated. And that's a good thing, because alternative is just common funds (either employer's or taxpayer's) raided by fraudsters without any risk whatsoever. Such system can never be viable.

I don’t get this complains about amazon warehouse work. When I was a teenager I used to work in alaska fish factory, with much much much stricter and harder schedules and rules that the article describes. If you plan to work in a warehouse - why are you surprized that you are required to lift heavy boxes and work long hours. Maybe someone can enlighten me why is this so blown out of proportion

I don't get it either. In a past life I was sold to work in a factory in London for basically no pay at 80 hours a week. It's like human standards of living go up over time or something.

Joking aside, it's probably a good sign that what once was normal isn't. Eventually robots will be doing all the lifting and we will look back and shake our heads at how much intellectual capacity we had tied up lifting boxes.

David Copperfield reference?

I agree with that, but I don't understand why such a big focus is on Amazon. It's not like they are the only ones with this type of working conditions.

Because they don't like Amazon, the same facts mean something else. Same bizarre idea upper middle class people seem to have about small businesses in the service industry, which arguably tend to treat workers considerably worse than "big mean megacorps".

I know a few people who worked in frozen food packing, where workers are expected to be in a freezer for 10+ hours a day lifting, moving and sorting heavy loads. Repetitive stress injuries were so common that it was a factor of when, not if, someone would become injured and be unable to do physical labor for a living again.

Each of them has done a stint with Amazon and left citing conditions, expectations and compensation.

Because Amazon makes many billions more than your Alaskan fish factory. There's no reason that Amazon couldn't improve conditions of their buildings, or allow more bathroom breaks, or notify workers in advance if they have a shift (it's common to dismiss workers when they arrive in the morning, denying them access to any other job). These are such small changes to their bottom line, but would humanize the process a lot more.

> These are such small changes to their bottom line, but would humanize the process a lot more.

Is Amazon breaking the Law? (honest question). If not, I don't see why expectations should be different for Amazon vs every other company out there.

Breaking the law isn't the only standard for workers to judge their company by.

Sure. And workers are free to choose where they work. Nobody has a gun on every Amazon's employee's head to force them to work there. We are not in the Middle-Ages anymore.

And workers are free to protest in the hopes of improving conditions and policies. We’ve seen this st other big tech companies recently, such as Google employees walking out to protest how sexual harassment complaints were handled, or Facebook CSO’s telling the board (against the COO’s wishes) about concerns over disinformation campaigns.

Sure. They are free to try to influence things but they can always vote with their feet and go for a different employer. In no world is a company obliged to listen to their workers demands, unless the company is clearly breaking the Law. Freedom goes both ways.

What you were willing to put up with as a teenager doesn't have much of a bearing on the standards of treatment and payment everyone else who has to work a warehouse job should demand.

What was the market cap of that fish factory, and how rich was your CEO? It's not a surprise that one of the world's most dominant companies, led by the world's richest man, evokes more scrutiny and questions about whether its practices are harmful. Its policies affect far more workers, and of course, are far more noticeable than any single small business workplace.

Because some people feel entitled to a larger share of their employer's profits regardless of their position in the company.

Rising standards are, in general, a good thing I would imagine.

My parents worked in an incredibly taxing physical environment and their reward was ruining their body.

I know, right? Isn't racing to the bottom just great? Why should we try and stop it, it's such a nice thing to aspire to.

> you are moving up and down the ladder picking 380 items per hour for 10 hours

A picker is expected to pick an item every 9-10 seconds for 10 hours?

Pretty much, one of the things about working at a place like that is you have ZERO value as a human, your prior experience, educational level, none of that matters.

You're expected to be a literal human robot, a mindless cog in a machine and the picking rates reflect that. It's basically a living nightmare.

Nowadays even donkeys don't work that much.

This seems pretty believable. A lot of picking systems have a light that tells you which position to grab something off of. (This is called "pick to light".)

So you're just reaching and grabbing something off a shelf and throwing it on a conveyor. It's a pretty simple operation that won't take all that long.

If your algorithm is any good, you should be about to group them together so that a picker can grab several nearby things one right after another. (It wouldn't be good for efficiency or the worker to make them move around more than necessary.)

It is manual labor, so it's going to be physically demanding. I'm sure they probably push people as hard as they feel they can get away with, but this rate seems like something most able bodied people could achieve. But I'm sure they're very tired and sore after their shift is over.

Why is it that every single article about abused Amazon warehouse workers includes a GoFundMe link?

Because America. In some other countries it would be perceived as government failure that needs fixing when an individual has to go beg for charity.

Another entire class of issues that would not exist if we had proper healthcare in this country. I bet Amazon loves its home state of Washington where the state does this dirty work for them at the expense of taxpayers, leaving workers with no care unless they are willing to spend thousands and years on worker's comp cases. That's despite being required by law to pay into a fund that cannot be used. These entities should be ashamed of themselves and we should be ashamed as a country for treating our hard working citizens this way. Just goes to show you, hard work for others is far from a virtue but only something to be done to keep from starving. In America anyway, hard work mostly does not pay off.

Not saying that this is not true, but "World Socialist Website" is a website with content created to promote socialist agenda on behalf of a group of socialist parties.

Again, I'm not discrediting them, but it's good to know that there's an implicit bias and agenda on this type of content.

Same goes for the majority of the mainstream media. I wish someone would build a Chrome Extension that could reveal potential biases based on political donations, affiliations, and known shareholders, in relation to the media website you're visiting. It would add a lot of context and allow people to have more criteria to evaluate the media they consume.

Thats interesting.

Most non-mainstream media makes you dive through the 501-C##'s papers, ICANN whois records, etc to find out whose voice you're hearing. And then you gotta dig like a shameless conspiracy theorist to find out what that means about what you're reading.

Socialist media tells you who/what it is. Right there in the title.

Why the distrust for Workers' Rights?

> Why the distrust for Workers' Rights?

As somebody who spent part of my life in a socialist country, there are millions of reasons to distrust socialists. The Party's (under socialism, you always know which one is The Party because all others are banned) press is usually a non-ending stream of lies. Of course, the fact that all socialist press I've had experience with were complete liars does not mean that this one, which I never read before, is, but at least there's a cause for caution.

Especially as we didn't hear the other side at all - once, in the press, there was a rule to try and get opposite's site take on the matter, but of course the revolutionaries don't have much need for rules, do they?

This article has mysteriously vanished from the front page in record time. Vouch for articles?

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