Indiana manipulated report on Amazon worker’s death, investigation says
indystar.com
indystar.com
Hate to be cliche, but reminds me of the opening scene in Fight Club where Edward Norton's character describes how insurance adjusters(?) determine if a recall is cheaper than the lawsuits from dead/injured people, they do it, otherwise... they don't.
Why would Amazon behave less profitably? Simply because we perceive it to be more moral?
If the former, I'm super disappointed but not surprised. It is no secret that anyone who remotely questions the criticism of Amazon is downvoted on this forum.
And I say that as someone who avoids spending a dollar out of protest against that company. I really find their practices terrible.
Yes. Why is this so controversial? Why are we okay with profits being more important than ethics?
Both are continuums, with profits being accurately quantified, and ethics being quite vague, subject to culture and people and history - it's no surprise not every actor comes to the same actions given the same situation.
No, to really drive the point corporate officers need to go to jail.
"Why?" aside, there are a few mechanisms behind your question-begging.
Capital itself is amoral. Money doesn't want anything, is not constrained or affected by ethics or morality, and can be used for kittens and torture in exactly the same ways and in the same form.
Companies are created by people, so they can have principles under which the company is guided (by people), and people in turn have ethics (good or bad). Either through weakness or avarice, despite any personal feelings, all public benefit takes a back seat to profits. This is the morality of most capitalist companies: whatever it takes.
It's a cop-out in favor of capital. "Welp, the company doesn't allow me to act according to my ethics because [something about the primacy of shareholders]," say those with power in the company. Any criticism of the morality of capitalist companies is ridiculed as reducing profits, often called "leaving money on the table" and seen nearly-universally in Western societies as a fireable offense for any businessperson hewing to the idea. It's a reason to reduce a person's control over any part of the capital flows that comprise day to day business and finance.
It's a morality of bigotry in favor of capital, and part of "growing up" is learning how to be a "team player" and suppressing one's own preferences in order to perpetuate this bigotry. Comes now Amazon into the picture...
I say this as a capitalist, but the answer is capitalism.
Our greed-based system incentivizes hoarding and profit above all else, with the logic being, an unrepentant search for profit will, as a side effect, produce the best living conditions and wealthiest people.
It is what it is, but it's a form of "scrub logic" or "loser logic" to run a business in a capitalist system which puts morals above profits. Generally, you will never be successful on a large scale, and all large actors will dominate you easily. There are very, very few exceptions.
The question is at that point what do you do? And to boot the amount of money being saved by this will be peanuts.
I would say something to the effect of “stop I don’t want a part in that please follow the correct process and investigate properly.” That’s what should happen when faced with incidents like this.
The notion that we can design a perfect legal system that will always coerce prosocial behavior from sociopaths is absurd. One of the founding assumptions of a democracy is that most people, being humans, will behave humanely. In some circumstances, they need guidance and modest incentives, which is why we have things like building codes, health codes, and workplace safety standards. In rarer circumstances, some people are so awful that we need criminal sanctions to remove bad apples from the ability to cause harm.
We should not expect people to give up their moral sense just because they are cashing a paycheck. And we must not excuse leaders for being monsters just because they get a bigger slice of the pie.
This is why whistleblowers deserve protection above and beyond normal lawsuit situations, because there's almost always a big incumbent on the other end of the deal who still wants the story squashed.
More calls for transparency, more calls for public offices to be held accountable, will always be needed to push back against the tide of influence from all the money floating around.
Good for Stallone for quitting and reporting, and I hope this gets way broader coverage along with every other story like this.
Lots of folks on HN are in management. I'll assume that none of them have killed any employees recently... Was that because the proper government agencies have regularly informed them of their duty not to kill employees? Or was it rather that many of us are human beings and don't want to regularly kill people just to save few dollars on e.g. sufficient training programs?
I would argue the actual cover up is much worse, as if it were successful it would allow behavior to continue unimpeded.
And the reason this isn't a "well-run country"... is what, exactly?
Might the influence of companies like Amazon have something to do with it?
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazo...
https://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-f...
( my own )
Suffice it to say Amazon does not care about employees, neither at the warehouses nor at their corporate headquarters.
When I was there a guy jumped off a building because they wouldn't let him switch off a toxic team. They also similarly tried to prevent me from switching teams when I was there.
A week ago I was at one of the Amazon retail stores and an employee there agreed that Amazon cares nothing for their employees. Obviously one should take this with a grain of salt as this is just a random statement from a random retail employee, but this is generally what I hear from Amazon workers both current and ex.
The general word on the street in Seattle is "Amazon sucks" to the extent I've heard Amazon employees referred to as Amholes.
I mean, they would have let him leave the company, right? It seems unreasonable to blame Amazon for this guy’s tragic decision, since any reasonable person would have taken a more reasonable exit.
Top of the list? Visa problems.
Just about every dev that it's in the region knows this. It's why their recruiters constantly spam talent in the region. Insane turnover, and you have a very short shelf life due to burnout. It's also why their compensation is mostly in stock. They know you won't last to collect your RSUs.
Not only that, the stock doesn't follow a typical vesting period like "4 years, with a one year cliff" but instead is HEAVILY weighted to later years, so that at the end of year one you barely get any of it percentage-wise.
year 1: $150k cash + $100k bonus + $10k stock
year 2: $150k cash + $80k bonus + $30k stock
year 3+4: $150k cash + $110k stock
Realistically, it means that you only get into stock comp if you've stayed for a few years and have decided that it's where you want to stay. Otherwise, you just get a nice big pile of cash each month.
This guy's manager was also promoted in the next promo cycle.
Amazon really makes it clear they're a fucking awful company filled with immoral employees.
I've got a laundry list of Amazon horror stories.
I find it interesting the whistle blower claims the governor attended a meeting where pressure was applied to back off the investigation. The Governor claims he never attended a meeting. Wouldn't this be an easy item to fact check by getting records of meeting attendees?
Just play that on the evening news every day until Amazon pays full death benefits and punitive fines to the Terry family.
Oh yeah, and arraign the director on criminal conspiracy charges. And the governor too.
Hope this stays in the news.
What he disputed (according to the article) was his personal involvement in the case, and his attendance at a particular meeting.
He did not dispute allegations of interference by state agencies, per se.
That meeting was probably never on the official schedule. There are numerous ways to arrange such things off the books. The Gov's office can certainly provide the schedule which will give him plausible deniability, after which it's he said she said, unless another witness comes forward.
(If the above strikes you as too underhanded and sleazy, well, the whole affair is such. The lure of Amazon HQ2 was in play, remember.)
At the end of the day, it's Amazon's responsibility to enforce a safety culture in each and every fulfillment center, and failing to do so is inexcusable.
The Indiana officials who tried to cover this up should have their ass put in a sling.
Forklift training is one thing. Forklift maintenance is not something you could easily teach. It is learned by years of on the job experience.
Something that Amazon was not willing to pay for with Forklift Maintenance Mechanics.
Disgusting show from all parties involved. There should be a FBI investigation and the Governors phone location data used. I bet the whistle-blower is right.
I'm from Indiana, years ago we had the Indiana License Branch Director be diagnosed with narcolepsy and still had a driving license..no joke this state has no logic
US state governors are this cheap? :)
Maybe it is about the state showing what it could do for Amazon in the future, should they build their HQ there? Or maybe it is more about saving the image of the company then the actual fine?