Amazon warehouse employee in Poland dies at work
gloswielkopolski.pl
gloswielkopolski.pl
- 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.
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.
> 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.
https://www.shmula.com/what-is-the-role-of-the-waterspider-i...
I'd consider that a major difference, but your mileage may vary :)
This is the step that most people would point out as the main 'mistake'. However, a medic without his equipment isn't a lot of use, and it's pretty likely the facility had a medical bay. For a patient who can walk, taking them to the medical bay will probably lead to better care quicker than calling the medic out. Walking there with someone is a very sensible precaution.
Imagine the reverse... Medic called to employee. Medic doesn't have defibrillator in equipment bag (it's filled with stuff for more common accidents). Employee dies because now the medic has to make the journey from the medical bay to the employee four times, taking far too long.
Edit: To add I had one in May despite being fit, young-ish and with no cardio-vascular problems. It came on whilst swimming and I foolishly carried on through it, got dressed and walked home, lay down for a bit before I got my wife to take me to the emergency room where they did approximately 4 seconds of EKG before stuffing me full of drugs and rushing me to surgery via an ambulance. For an idea of the level of potential for dying the ambulance came with a doctor as well as paramedics.
So on the Monday I went swimming and thought the pain was related to being still a bit sick or heartburn. The reason I went to the hospital was the antacids weren't doing anything and it was pretty painful. I also nearly threw up in the changing rooms at the pool.
By the time I got to the hospital I was actually feeling quite a bit better and feeling a bit sheepish about being there. Then they hooked me up to the EKG and I knew something was very wrong by everyone going into overdrive. I didn't know how wrong until after the surgery (you're awake through the PCI) and the surgeon took me through what was going on. Basically I was minutes away from dying as my left coronary artery was completely blocked. They had to stent the clot to fix things.
The aftermath is that there wasn't a known cause. I have no chronic issues, or clotting issues and my arteries themselves are perfectly healthy. I was lucky and there was no visible damage to the heart. I'm back exercising again and now in my second set of rehab.
In Germany defibrillators are openly available in most public buildings and I think any industrial setting has to have them easily accessible too. They're as idiot proof as it gets: you push a big button and follow the instructions (automated voice commands, but I think there is also a text display as backup).
I don't know what the laws are like in Poland but all I'm saying is that this scenario you propose could easily be solved with basic health and safety regulations.
You're also ignoring that they could have called the medic while also moving him in the direction of the medical facility, assuming the movement didn't contribute to his death. Not to mention that a trained emergency medic should know what equipment to bring based on reported symptoms.
The description given above is likely a myocardial infarction or an aortic dissection.
If you are having chest pain, you should minimize myocardial demand. Sit down. Call emergency services.
Do not exert yourself by walking. That is a recipe for sudden cardiac death.
Anything else is just an accident waiting to happen (and in this case, did happen).
>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
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.
If he was employeed full time and been there for more than 2 years, then that's literally illegal.
You can also dismiss someone if they can no longer do their job, e.g. a driver who loses their licence
1) redundancy - which carries a legal proof of showing that the position is no longer needed, and you are not allowed to hire anyone else for the same or similar position for a length of time
2) end of contract due to performance issues - that is even more lengthy than the redundancy path usually, you have to clearly demonstrate that someone's performance has been inadequate, with a clearly demonstrable metric, but also you need to give the employee a chance to improve. Extra training, "performance improvement plans", at the very least written warnings etc. This process usually takes 6 months at minimum in order to satisfy all the legal bits around it.
3) immediate dismissal due to breaking the law, being caught stealing, driving drunk, destroying company property...this sort of stuff. The employer still has the legal burden of demonstrating that the stuff in question happened, but a police report is usually enough. I suppose something like a driver losing their licence and then literally being unable to do their job falls under this too.
None of the above allow for "you're sick? don't bother coming in tomorrow" scenario. If OP's friend's manager actually did say that, then it's a clear path for a lawsuit for unfair dismissal.
Like, "letting someone go because we ran out of money" is not a valid reason for dismissal.
Many many firms already cover payroll with loans, eventually financiers will stop extending credit.
That said, layoffs are legal, if the firm goes through the required steps.
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-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.
> 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-in...
It sounds like they needed security guards, and the firm they hired turned out to be one that liked to play fascist dress-up.
Did they benefit more than if they had hired normal security?
Seems to be absolutely the case here. The worker has reported to his "leader" that he's feeling unwell but was ignored. I'd expect criminal charges to be brought against him at this point.
I think Amazon can implement whatever solution they want, but if your manager ignores a very direct report of feeling unwell then what else can you do?
>>But here is Amazon, with its history of endangering its workforce, that once again will do nothing.
Well, we'll see what happens in this case. Polish prosecutors can be very zealous(for better or worse) so I don't think "nothing" is on the table.
You can make sure that the incentives in the organisation aligns with preventing deaths like these.
You can educate your workforce.
You can hire more people.
And so on.
(Note that the latter is a problem in lots more places; see "Bradford factor")
In other words, we can punish the local manager, but that won't fix the fact that the corporate leadership of Amazon seems to foster an environment where this kind of management is accepted and perhaps even encouraged.
I have never worked at Amazon (and by the sounds of things, I never want to either), but it sounds like a dystopian nightmare. And we should not be surprised when people optimize their behavior to the dystopian nightmare if that's the environment that they have to succeed in.
We need data to be sure of this. Remember when all those people making iPhones committed suicide because of the terrible working conditions [1]?
But further investigation then found that suicide rates amongst workers were actually lower than suicide rates of regular people in China or the USA...
This might well be a story like that. Without data we can't know.
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"?
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.
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.
This all stems from the social hypocrisy about what you can or cannot do. We are living in cities, not in the woods, and sometimes we cannot use our basic rights without strings attached. Yes, start your family, rent a house, buy a car, go for it. And smile yes-sir to the smirking sociopath who wipes his dirt on you because you’re on his hook and there is no turning back. It’s like an enslaving conspiracy, but on a “nod to each other” level.
people will put their health in second place a lot of times if there are other problem
Only because there is no other way to live their life. They may not live it, or may live it like that. There is usually no third option for the masses, except for a few exceptions.
This is why we need UBI, so no person has to work a job they don't enjoy.
You don't go working in an Amazon warehouse if you have other options in life. It's for people who lost hope, in a way. According to the article, the family was very poor and the wife feels guilty he died trying to provide for her meds.
Predators select vulnerable people and gradually accustom them to worse and worse conditions.
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 :/
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
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.
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.
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.
Are they? I'd say it is common knowledge Amazon treat their workers really bad.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/legis...
If it wasn't a union shop, then you would have been working overtime at the same hourly rate as regular hours.
This is what GP objected to - if there's no incentive for management not to demand excessive overtime, they do it all the time and burn people out. If there are overtime limits or statutory pay increases for overtime, they manage their resources properly.
His point is that they are interfering with employer/employees relationship, and skim a percentage. One could argue the unions aren't getting the best deals in the long run, and skim a percentage on top. The amount of corruption those involved get tempted to participate in is significant, hard to know what we don't know. What I observe is that more prestigious jobs get away without unions getting in the way. In tech, there is generally a distrust in political factions forming to supposedly fight for employees benefits. Perhaps well paid workers figured there is no need for fighting against well paying employers, for discrete reasons. Amazon warehouse employees? If it's so bad, leave. It's just feeding the beast to accept the now well known conditions there.
Unfortunately, the current economic system comes with an air-tight protection from such dangerous ideas: if you don't work, you can't live. So, unless there is some place that deigns to offer better conditions than Amazon warehouses, your choices are to work in these conditions or just die.
> What I observe is that more prestigious jobs get away without unions getting in the way. In tech, there is generally a distrust in political factions forming to supposedly fight for employees benefits.
This happens more in newer industries, where unions are more actively discouraged from the get go. Older prestigious professions do tend to have unions, at least in my country. Dctors have unions. Actors and screen writers have unions. Magistrates (at least those working for the state - prosecutors, judges, public defenders) have unions. I think civil engineering is not unionized, but that is more of an exception.
Even more, some areas in tech are some of the most disfunctional working environments around, and unionization is becoming a hot topic. Look at the recent Activision Blizzard or Ubisoft or Riot Games scandals.
[0]: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy...
> I wish people who weren’t doing the work would fuck right off with interfering with other peoples working relationships. [..] You feel fucked from every direction at a warehouse.
It's precisely the POINT to interfere, because they cannot fend for themselves. It is literally the reason why unions were invented and why governments of pretty much all advanced nations choose to regulate work: There will always be those who have no choice but to accept the work that is given to them, and unless someone fends for them, they will be exploited.
Try to keep your own emotions out of it, and look at the raw numbers & statistics across countries. The patterns are evidently clear.
Giving employees reasonable working hours, reasonable working conditions, and reasonable pay for the cost of living is trivially the right move if your ambition is to build a lasting monument of human accomplishment and a lasting legacy of human kinship and solidarity.
</sarcasm>
[0] https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2003/01/30/pittsbur...
Usually, both employee and employer want the overtime - more so for the employee, if the OT pay is attractive. When I worked night shifts in a mail sorting facility (11PM to 11AM), the OT pay was almost 100%
Employees want it because they can make more money without having to balance multiple gigs/jobs, employers because less employees = less paperwork and less people to manage.
Fair wages and OT bans by law are the only way out - like in Germany, where you are not allowed to work more than 10 hours a day across all your jobs combined.
I make fair money yet I still moonlighted a lot. Should I be allowed to work extra to have money for a sweet bicycle or travelling?
If people only have the choice between being exploited by Amazon in conditions that are beyond reasonable (e.g. having to piss in bottles, not getting lunch breaks), by "gig employers" shifting entrepreneurial risk towards employees (Uber, but also hospitality that doesn't pay minimum wage so people are depending on tips) or being homeless, then yes it is modern slavery.
The solution is to legislate companies with despicable practices out of business, but that ship has sailed some time in the '70s -'80s when globalization and unscrupulous capitalism kicked into fifth gear.
Still, it is fine to me to express frustration using a childish dream for revenge every once in a while.
Source? Retail business profit margins are 2% to 3%, with labor being the biggest cost.
Without a law requiring all retail businesses to do the same, Amazon retail prices would become wildly uncompetitive to other large retailers.
[0]: https://ir.aboutamazon.com/news-release/news-release-details...
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-amazon-hikes-star....
> threads
Amazon is in control of that number. They could easily quadruple that if they pulled money out of avoidance schemes and cut fake costs.
I'd bet Amazon tech workers in Gdańsk and Warsaw have more purchasing power than their German counterparts
Which really vacuum cleans all lands easy of Germany but that's another point.
But that's how Poland will pull itself up by the bootstraps and become rich. It is a stage every successful country went through.
Cheap workforce is the sole reason of Amazon's presence in PL (until very recent, they didn't even have a local domain) and the backbone of their logistics for Western Europe.
I don't understand how mandating inefficiency is protecting workers?
Low-regulation countries (or corrupt countries, which is equivalent for the corrupters) ignore those limits and achieve efficiency for the rich at the expense of the bodies of the poor.
Just like you can't legally sell yourself into slavery or sell your organs, you shouldn't be allowed to sell your health away for a bigger buck like this; and businesses that rely on such practices for their business model should simply be closed down.
Some casual holocaust trivialization on a Wednesday.
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.
Nonsense. All it takes is checking temperature or self-reporting symptoms.
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.
Like how people can care for "animal rights" and "human rights" while still eating meat and supporting the destruction of "heathens" (ideological or otherwise).