'Shockingly High' Number of Injuries at Amazon's Staten Island Warehouse | Hacker News Reader

'Shockingly High' Number of Injuries at Amazon's Staten Island Warehouse

gothamist.com

178 pointsbryanrasmussen86 comments

It might be high there, but Troutdale, OR is #1. What a horrible company to work for. "The most dangerous facility, according to the piece, is Amazon's warehouse in Troutdale, Ore., which had a serious injury rate of 26 per 100 workers, more than six times the industry average."

https://www.wweek.com/news/business/2019/11/27/amazon-wareho...

> serious injury rate of 26 per 100 workers

Do you know the time period for this stat, I couldn't find it in the linked article.

The OSHA incident rate is per 200,000 employee-hours, which is roughly 100 people, full-time, for a year.

So for every 100 people that Amazon employs full-time-equivalent in that warehouse, about 26 of them will have a serious OSHA-reported incident each year.

In the chemical laboratory this would be unacceptable.

It is unacceptable here as well.

> a serious injury rate of 26 per 100 workers

What? A worse than 1/4 chance you will be maimed? That seems absurdly high. Deep sea crab fishing off the Alaska coast is a safer profession!

I’m interested in the fact that “normal” is a 1 in 25 chance.

Have you ever worked in a large warehouse?

The last time an article on HN about Amazon's warehouses being dangerous came out, a number of folks tried to argue that it's no big deal because they weren't dying. Thus, it's a safe place to work. High accident rates are perfectly fine as long as they dont die...

What a boring dystopia we've come to inhabit.

Evil is banal.

What's sad, all fictional portrayals of dystopias are struggles and fights. Like, "the good guys died in battle from being killed by the bad guys".

Now, if you speak up against FAANG or some other company making bullshit promises to "save the world", it's the people that stomp out the "good guys".

Don't get me wrong, it's clever on them. But it's sad and makes the coming decades unnerving if these companies aren't lassoed into control. Apple is especially guilty of the whole cult following thing where they can do no wrong in the eyes of their zealots. Their continued growth and profiting is a symbol not of parasitic nature, but of their divinity to these people.

Goddamn it, and I'm a red blooded capitalist. How do we resurrect Teddy Roosevelt, the old Bull Moose himself? We need Teddy...

No, because they were dying but that someone picked up the corpse before the end of the day. So it's no biggie. It's not like someone didn't notice or anything.

I think it was Tennessee where a dude was dead on the floor for a good 20 minutes. But a week or two earlier, they noticed on the cameras he put an item in the wrong bin when stocking. They told him after about 90 seconds of him doing it.

That's the one!

Not maimed, it's any kind of injury (at least according to Amazon). They claim their number are so high because the fastidiously report any injury.

Well if it slows you down at all, you'd better report it, or else you're likely to be fired for missing your performance targets.

Would it then be reasonable to fabricate injuries in order to game performance assessments?

I actually work inside one of Amazon's FCs on the West Coast. The managers in my department, actually encourage us to notify them if anything starts to feel out of the ordinary, in an effort to keep a little thing (overreaching instead of using the ladder, can cause shoulder strain, not bending at the knees can cause back strain, knee strain, not grasping product correctly can cause finger/wrist strain, even any of the physical effects of not staying hydrated while working) from turning into a big thing.

Is there no such thing as a "minor injury" then? Scraped my finger on a blister pack, better report it like I would a shelf falling down and crushing my leg.

If there is such a thing where is the line. I'd draw the line at anything that requires more care than can be provided on-site, IE you had to go to the clinic/hospital due to the injury.

I don't know if I would draw the line @ "than can be provided on site"

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/02/amazon-warehouse-workers...

Injuries. Not necessary maimed. Could be a repeat it I’ve stress injury.

That sounds absurdly high. What constitutes a serious injury?

Apparently this is the definition used:

> Its rate of serious injuries—those requiring job restrictions or days off work—was more than four times the industry average

I'd like to see the set of job restrictions.

(Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazo...)

How can anyone inside Amazon look at those numbers and think, "Meh."? Otherwise they'd fix it. Actually, they never would have let it get this high. To be this high, nobody with any ability to fix it cared. Period.

They look at the opposing political party and think "they are the real monsters, we're the Good People"; America's a helluva drug.

It's amazing to think that a decade ago, Amazon was touting injury rates around 3-4 in fulfillment centers -- lower than grocery stores. Their Delaware center was recognized as one of the safest in the country by OSHA.

I worry about Amazon workers in more business friendly places. If they are doing this in a regulation heavy city/state like NY, other places must be horrific.

> Amazon was touting injury rates around 3-4 in fulfillment centers

Amazon's response sort of touches on this, saying they've pushed for recording every incident, big or small. 3-4 could be from underreporting or from better working conditions (or both).

Companies do that to muddy the waters while also pushing policy that punishes people for reporting “real” injuries. Also these are lost time accidents. They could not have been previously hidden.

They could via a policy that quietly fires people who are too poor to afford a lawyer when they're injured on the job.

Lost time or job restrictions. It could be true that Amazon is more aggressive about restricting work after an injury resulting in more reports.

> The figures also show a "shockingly high" number of severe injuries at JFK8, Kearl said. According to the report, workers whose injuries were logged by Amazon were each forced to miss an average of 64.04 days of employment.

But Amazon's response is bullshit. The data is from government stats, and the reporting threshold is the same as it ever was (basically, if an employee is admitted to the hospital):

https://www.osha.gov/report.html

Amazon's PR people are pretending the high numbers are because they are reporting papercuts, but papercuts would be rejected for the government stats. This is "severe injury or death" reporting only.

"According to the report, workers whose injuries were logged by Amazon were each forced to miss an average of 64.04 days of employment."

Does that sound like papercuts? An average of three months off work, if they even return?

Sorry, I agree with you. I think the 15 represents the truthful amount of serious injuries. I'm saying the 3-4 was likely underreported to some degree for whatever reason.

> The data is from government stats, and the reporting threshold is the same as it ever was (basically, if an employee is admitted to the hospital)

This is wrong. It's from an analysis of Amazon's own incident logs that OSHA requires companies to keep (OSHA form 300A[1].) The government doesn't "reject" incidents from these logs. Additionally, a recordable injury is any of the following[2]

  - Any work-related fatality.
  - Any work-related injury or illness that results in loss of consciousness, days away from work, restricted work, or transfer to another job.
  - Any work-related injury or illness requiring medical treatment beyond first aid.
  - Any work-related diagnosed case of cancer, chronic irreversible diseases, fractured or cracked bones or teeth, and punctured eardrums.
  - There are also special recording criteria for work-related cases involving: needlesticks and sharps injuries; medical removal; hearing loss; and tuberculosis.

That's very different than "severe injury or death" only.

[1] https://www.osha.gov/recordkeeping/new-osha300form1-1-04-For...

[2] https://www.osha.gov/recordkeeping/

Anecdotally, I know a couple of people who work at Amazon warehouses which I haven't seen mentioned in the media, and they tell me they haven't seen any of the safety issues others are reporting, and that they take safety procedures pretty seriously. I'm in a locale that is very business friendly.

Maybe this issue is specific to certain locations, markets, or segments of the logistics chain. I'd imagine that employee turnover, the products being shipped, the tasks being performed, and product volume varies significantly based on the particular location. They have a lot of facilities doing a lot of different things. The media usually mentions 'fulfillment' specifically with these articles, but that's only one part of their logistics operations.

I suspect that a large part of this is that Amazon has (according to Wikipedia) more than 300 warehouses.

If this is correct, then it would not be surprising if a few warehouses are outliers even if the overall figures are reasonable. After all, randomness (both in terms of overall luck, and the distribution of shitty managers) will end up skewing a few of the results very high or very low.

A couple things go into that, their NY location is probably extremely busy for Amazon due to it's proximity to NYC with it's large fairly well off population and corresponding large number of orders. That business, without increases in efforts towards safety, means more going on which means more chances for injury. As for your anecdotal info about safety with so many locations there's bound to be lots of variance in business, contractor safety, and culture around reporting.

How would that explain Troutdale, OR, which has a much higher rate than the NY location? Portland is an order of magnitude smaller than NYC. I would hope the rate of injuries would likewise be lower.

It's not going to be perfect and local safety culture can turn a low volume place into a nightmare if managers don't care.

Alternatively is it still a large one? They have large hubs that serve larger areas, not everything is around to be serviced by a local hub.

I honestly don't know if it is a large one. The nearest populated areas to Portland are Seattle, 200 miles to the north; Boise, 450 miles to the east; and Sacramento, 600 miles to the south. Maybe the Portland hub is used to serve all the little town halfway between Portland and Seattle, Boise and Sacramento?

It looks pretty big and is next to a Fedex Ground hub. It's pretty definitely a major distribution hub for the whole area.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Amazon+Fulfillment+Center+...

This one is easy.

The places with the longest living and happiest people are rural towns.

The places with the shortest living, most stressed people are also rural towns.

Small numbers breed statistical anomalies because it’s easier for 10 people in a town of 100 to happen to have bad or great lives than it is for 10000 of 100000.

They could be different facility types.

Amazon has sort centers, distribution centers, returns processing centers, robotic fulfillment centers, non-robotic fulfillment centers, and maybe other stuff I don't know about.

The people at different warehouse types are often doing different jobs.

According to a quick search, JFK8 is fulfillment center where they do pick and pack, and it's also one of the warehouses with the Kiva robots.

Couldn't find too much about PDX9.

As we've seen in Indiana, Amazon is powerful enough that state legislators will bend some rules for their favor: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2019/11/2...

There are unseen externalities for getting a tube of toothpaste for $5.99 shipped to your door in 24 hours.

Unfortunately, those externalities are our countrymen and women.

I can order hardware from a local store at 7 PM and have it delivered by 9 PM the same day here in Europe. They also have better prices than Amazon and no work safety problems. You can do things well or you can do them badly. There's no rule saying that good customer experience has to take a toll on your employees.

Yes, because the store is local rather than being a warehouse some distance away and the store has a limited variety of things available. I don't really see how this comparison is useful.

They'll probably have toothpaste though.

Relevant recent article from satire publisher The Onion: "Horrifying Series Of Unspeakable Actions Result In $39 Crock-Pot Being Delivered To Man Same Day" https://www.theonion.com/horrifying-series-of-unspeakable-ac...

They're running employee testimonial ads about how great it is to work at their warehouses on national broadcasts pretty regularly now. That's all I needed to know that it's going downhill faster rather than slower.

That just means that they have a PR problem. It doesn't necessarily indicate a problem with their actual warehouse conditions, though there may be one; it's enough that people believe there's a problem.

But these adverts raise even more suspicion. I had a very awkward feeling when I saw them the first time in the German TV. Everybody knows that adverts are the poster-child of lying. Why should this be different? And if those are real workers being interviewed (I doubt that) who in his right would voluntarily step in front of a camera and say "this is a great and safe place to work". If they are for real, I'd think they are coerced. If they are not for real, what's the point?

Good thing everyboy took Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the woodshed over Amazon settling in NYC. We need more of these worker-maiming lower class jobs to keep the lower classes in their place!

AOC taking Amazon away from NYC did not help neither these workers nor NYC citizens.

That was regarding office jobs, not warehouse jobs.

> "Ensuring the safety of associates in our building is our number one priority and we invest heavily in safety,"

Having pain medications on vending machines for their employees seems to me like scheduling to fix a leak after it rains.

> Gizmodo first reported, the warehouse scored a 15.2 on its OSHA Incident Rate, which compares the number of serious injuries to the number of total hours worked among all employees at a given worksite. That figure is five times greater than the national average for all workers, and substantially more than rates found in other dangerous workplaces, such as coal mines and sawmills. The average OSHA Rate for general warehouse workers is 5.2, or roughly a third of the injury frequency at the Staten Island fulfillment center.

I keep forgetting why I cancelled my amazon account but then I’m reminded

heh, this is pretty cyberpunk though

That's not a good thing! People have gotten mesmerized by the cool aesthetic and miss/forget the whole corporate hellscape aspect of cyberpunk.

"corporate hellscape aspect" - that's exactly what I mean.

Ah ok, I read your comment with much more enthusiasm for it being a cyberpunk hellscape.

We were warned not to feed man to the machine, yet that's exactly what we did. I guess everyone that died fighting for this country did so to create a bunch of billionaires and slaves to serve them. Our nation was paid for by the blood of its people, but somehow this debt is always forgotten. The people, by the right of sacrifice, deserve better than this.

By the right of sacrifice? Is this a veterans-only warehouse or something?

The US created a bunch of billionaires, but it also created the richest middle class. Let’s cut back the drama a bit and maybe discuss a law to improve safety?

No, it's a sombre note that the state conscripted men and sent them to their deaths. To defend a free country. Which was especially free to the rich, it turns out.

Drama? What about the epidemic suicides and drug overdoses happening in this country? What about the absolute destruction of rural communities by monopolies emboldened by the lack of antitrust enforcement? The people of this country are being abused in so many ways and nothing is being done for them. Laws aren't going to help this situation, it's our stinking attitude that's the problem. It's our complete disregard for human life that's the problem.

I may be off base here but this sounds an awful lot like perfect being the enemy of the good. Or, framed another way, idealism being the enemy of the pragmatic.

Waxing poetic about everyday tragedy is all well and good as a rhetorical device. However, it doesn't really do anything except to sow the seeds of division now does it? Especially when you cap the whole bit with the idea that it is thought that is wrong and not action.

And your proposed solution to this is effectively a paradigm shift in the perception of human value?

I'm sure you're the type of person that thinks poems are written to solve some sort of problem. Not all human communication is about expressing some solution to a problem. We can communicate sentiment and points of view as well.

Hey man, at least we aren't speaking German!

>The people, by the right of sacrifice, deserve better than this.

The people want their Echo Dots tomorrow, and they don't give a shit what it takes to make that happen. They want them yesterday.

And if you ask the people, many will state that Amazon's warehouse employees should be grateful for any work they get, and that they're always free to quit and find other work if they choose.

And most of the rest will just shrug their shoulders and say it's regretful but not actually do anything about it.

Do you have data to support your claims?

I wasn't making a claim that requires proof, but the attitude described can be found in many of the Amazon threads on this site, at least when wages are discussed.

Also, if Americans were unsatisfied with the way Amazon's employees are treated, the market would respond appropriately, and Amazon would be forced to change its practices to remain productive. As it is, the market doesn't appear to value the welfare of Amazon's employees over its current business practices.

Amazon's stock has fluctuated with political focus on the company. It dropped for a whole month this year I believe -- I don't have the figures on hand. You are right that many Americans have a greedy consumer mindset, but also many Americans don't feel like they have a choice. With 70% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, that doesn't leave room for wallet activism. While what you are saying is principled, I think the full circumstances of the economy and consumer conditions prevent them from expressing their sentiment in the market as you suggest.

Any bets on when people who are "shocked, shocked" about Amazon's treatment of its workers are going to put their money where their mouth is and actually forgo the convenience of next day delivery & rock bottom prices?

Americans have it tough in so many ways (health care system, lack of public transit, kleptocratic federal government), it's sad to see us making it even worse for our fellow small-guys like this to buy ourselves some convenience and save a few dollars on consumer goods. (Notwithstanding the many people for whom home delivery etc. is a godsend without which they'd have a much more difficult life. It's complicated.)

We vote with our dollars and currently we are telling Amazon "this is OK, keep doing it" loud and clear.

Some of us are doing it! I no longer do business with Amazon due to their association with law enforcement and surveillance.

I mean, when it comes down to it, is individual action really going to convince Amazon to have higher working standards? Or, will it come down to law?

I don't think it's reasonable to expect the average consumer to research the worker quality of life (and the product safety history, and the environmental record, and the political donations, and the tax evasion tactics, and ...) of all of the hundreds or thousands of companies that they give money to. These aren't the kinds things we can expect to solve with consumer boycotts.

Yes but you and I and the royal We of hackernews are aware of the issues. Further research is not required. So how are We reacting to it with our actions? Continuing to give amazon gobs of money & data?

This is a really bad take, voting with your dollar works when there’s actually competition. Amazon has an effective monopoly, and we need people to vote with their vote for regulation to protect works.

What does Amazon have that you can't purchase at any other retailer? With the exception of Amazon-branded products, you can find almost any item on another online marketplace.

I agree that regulation is probably needed to curb the excesses of a company Amazon's size. It doesn't follow to me, however, that you and I must continue shoveling money into their coffers whilst we complain about how bad they are.

Is there some reason you can't vote with both your dollar and your vote? Most of us can still buy our toothpaste, toilet paper, headphones, and cat litter at a local pharmacy, electronics store, or mall.

Monopoly? Everything you can buy at Amazon you could buy before Amazon ever existed. And guess what? You still can.

Not even remotely a monopoly.

This is not what the parent is talking about. Amazon has a virtual monopoly over online buying and selling, with even other sellers having to sell their products on Amazon to reach customers.

What does Amazon do with these third-party sellers? It uses the sales data that Amazon collected for them to create cheaper products with Amazon branding, which are then suggested ahead of the third-party products. This is blatant anti-competitive behavior; effectively no one can compete with Amazon’s online marketplace - not even the people in that marketplace.

What’s your source on Amazon using sales data to stifle competitors? I’ve read this claim a lot but haven’t seen any clear evidence.

What prevents these folks who fund all the unicorns from starting their own Amazon competitor? You made a pretty bold claim that nobody can compete with Amazon, but it’s not even clear how anyone is forced to use Amazon or sell on its website.

Literally nothing prevents you from standing up your own website and selling items. Consumers in most of the US can decide for or against shopping on Amazon, although many rural places have no options at all other than WalMart or Dollar General in terms of physical stores.

There’s literally nothing Amazon offers that you can’t get from a competitor, and often times at a better price in my experience.

This is missing the point. Amazon is acting anti-competitively towards the sellers currently using its platform. That is the problem, not that businesses could potentially set up their own sites. The conflict of interest is the problem; Amazon undercuts its own competitors using their data.

Maybe it is a better decision for a given business to not sell in Amazon. But that doesn’t make Amazon’s behavior any less anti-competitive. Many small-time sellers have no way to reach a large market without using Amazon to reach customers. Most people don’t go to smalltimeseller.com to buy stuff; for a large portion of consumers, online shopping is synonymous with Amazon.

Here’s source about the undercutting claim https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304441404577482...

> This is blatant anti-competitive behavior;

Agreed. So take them to task via the law/regulation, and stop giving them your money! Seek out the product website, pay the extra shipping to order right from the seller, buy the TV at best buy etc. etc. If you want other markets to be viable, it will certainly help if you put your money into them.

I really don't see why people think they can't resist Amazon's hegemony both in the political arena and with their wallets.

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