Worker's death from blunt force injuries resulted in $7k fine for Amazon
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
- 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.
As the parent poster said, Amazon is still subject to civil/criminal lawsuits. The $7000 fine is the penalty that OSHA can impose, but isn't all the penalties that Amazon can face.
Also, the standard that was being violated was "22.8(1)(1)(sec2)" which apparently is
"Employer did not provide a workplace free from a recognized, correctable and serious hazard where a specific standard did not exist."
Given how vague this is, it seems reasonable to let the employer fix the issue before enforcing a penalty.
Fines/penalties exist to ensure that the company (which is required to maximize profit) doesn't ever view a human life that way.
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.
> Want a job? Can pass a background check? No interview: apply today, start tomorrow.
I realize it's partly orthogonal to the concept of training, but also applicable. Cogs in the machine, indeed.
Your average ruthless capitalist sees people as disposable assets that can be easily replaced.
I was answering to the prompt, because the parent comment said “then there's no reason to be proactive about safety.”
I pointed out some logical reasons. And it’s not based on feelings like how capitalists “see” people.
What exactly do you imagine happens?
If the capitalist is ruthless and the factory is efficient and every worker is necessary, then obviously this can't just happen.
I mean do you think the ruthless capitalist is just paying a whole extra worker, even though N-1 workers can do the same job?
Guess what a true capitalist would do?
A true capitalist probably wouldn't pick either side of this false dichotomy. There's a balance to things because they are forced to live in the real world. And there's no such thing in the world as making everything perfectly safe (not just in a factory setting, but everywhere in life).
Here's the comment I responded to: "If you only fine for failure to abate, then there's no reason to be proactive about safety."
I'm pointing out - 'actually, even someone interested only in money should still find an equilibrium with safety'
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.
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 . . .
It sounds like it was something that would be difficult to foresee. Without seeing the entire picture, it would be pointless to speculate beyond that.
That is ridiculous.
>Indiana regulators found that the warehouse could have done more to fix or manage hazards that were "causing or likely to cause death,"
We aren't a swing state, but for sure we go blue once in a while. At the city level things are fairly blue. And my state is not broke, we were running a surplus last I checked.