I Was Illegally Fired by Amazon for Speaking Out About a Coworker's Death (2023)

Why did you announce it?

Wait. You were fired because you said to HR that you are going to be a father next week? How is this even legal?

At least it has gone to court, and she has won at this point. It's not clear to me whether Magda gets paid for the time between her dismissal and her job being reinstated.

I'll continue to boycott Amazon. Earlier in the week I spent about an hour sleuthing the web to find an obscure item that wasn't from Amazon or China, finally found it at a local supplier.

> I announced to HR that my wife is expecting (Tue) and was fired on Friday.

Did you expect this might happen, maybe the baby is due very soon?

It's awful in any case :-(

Sounds like an FMLA violation. Did you specifically say you would be taking leave? Not already on a "performance improvement" plan of any sort? Was anyone else let go on Friday?

I don't know how hard this sort of thing is to litigate, "at will" employment covers a lot of abuses, and honestly why would you want to stay at an employer who treats you like this? Probably best to spend your energy finding a new job.

Edit to add: You could report this to the Department of Labor. Not sure you'd personally get any restitution but if your employer was willing to do this kind of thing, you are probably not the only one they have screwed over. If an employer has a record of complaints they might get audited which could cost them a lot in penalties if they are violating the law.

Retaliation is not common in the US. Stop spreading misinformation.

Why would an HR department from any reputable organization fire you if your wife is expecting?

This is so stupid. In Spain even fathers get "paternity" leave. You even get a week off if you get married...

Do you have a source describing how common retaliation is in the US? I always thought it was actually pretty rare.

Sorry you lost your job, but I find it difficult to believe that it is solely due to you announcing the arrival of your child. Paternity leave is rarely more than 2 weeks in the US, I can't imagine a company preferring to deal with potential law suit instead of just living 2 weeks without an employee.

> Retaliation is pretty common in the US

I agree! And, they say this bluntly and while chest thumping: ‘we have strong laws against retaliation’ :-)

You disagree with your manager and that as*hole will put you on a pip the very next day

Just to clarify: was "fired without cause" (worked "at will" which most of full-time employments are in the US). By asking why they were getting rid of me I heard the pharse "for no good reason, really" like a broken record. This was enough indication that it was clearly in regards to my talk with HR a few days prior.

Also, during my announcement to HR about my wife's circumstances, I remarked I wanted to take some time off to be there for wifey & baby.

The company was 90% lawyers so just in case I wanted to proceed legal action against them, their Armada of lawyers made a possible follow-up rather unsavory.

> I announced to HR that my wife is expecting (Tue) and was fired on Friday

That's so low. Really, your former employer is despicable.

Sadly, and I say this with all the love for my Polish brethren and sisters, Poland and many Eastern European countries still have some catching up to do.

The silver lining, however, is that these countries make significant headway at a steady pace.

Especially the countries that are part of the EU are constantly improving, partly because they have to adhere to the EU-wide minimum baseline.

So I've got faith they'll get there.

But this lagging behind, for lack of a better world, is also, in part, why many US companies that want to expand into the EU set up bases in countries like Poland. It's generally cheaper and is the “least bad” from the corporations’ perspective regarding labor rights.

"Corporations don't have emotions and only act in the interest of profit."

I interpreted that to be the legal excuse given for an illegal firing, of which Amazon could not substantiate.

“Finally, the judge stated that my dismissal could have been caused by my activity. What I was accused of in terminating the contract was not proven during the case. Amazon didn’t manage to provide any evidence to support their position.”

“That is actually what the judge said: that there is a conflict between labor and employer, but the conflict cannot be an argument to dismiss union members.”

> but they didn’t know, because no one saw it

The English is a little confusing - "they fired me for allegedly taking pictures or videos — but they didn’t know, because no one saw it" implies she admits she did take pictures/videos of the dead colleague but Amazon couldn't have known.

If she had had taken photos and shared them with police to prove an accident or bad working practices fair enough, but otherwise I think I would have sacked her too if there was even anecdotal evidence that she had taken photos.

It's unclear (probably some language barrier issues) if she was essentially saying "I did take pictures and videos, but there's no way Amazon could have known I did that", or if she was saying "I didn't take pictures and videos, but Amazon is using that as an excuse to fire me".

But even if it's the former, so what? Assuming she was taking those pictures and videos with the intent to document what was going on in case there was something improper, Amazon absolutely should not be permitted to fire her because of it.

Even if she was taking pictures because she's a gossip and wanted to share them with people because it's just generally shocking to see someone die like that... well, I'm still sympathetic to the idea that she was actually fired because she was complaining about the working conditions, and the pictures she took were just a convenient excuse.

" to ensure that the total operational cost of hiring people to do these terrible jobs is much higher than using robots."

He was not crushed by machinery or anything:

"Dariusz worked so hard. His job used to be done by a few people during a shift, but then they made him do all that work alone, pushing around trolleys with heavy boxes."

He was simply pushed working too hard. So a robot doing the job would have been one solution - the other simply an extra human helping, or switching tasks, to something less physically demanding.

> continue to punish Amazon for these kinds of things.

Amazon is not punished. That woman was only reinstated in her rock-bottom-wage, back-breaking/RSI-inducing Amazon job.

If she'd have gotten some large sum of money as compensation, or if the court had ordered Amazon to enter good-faith negotiations with the union, or accept some of its demands, or to cease warehouse operations temporary etc. - that would have been punishment.

Dont worry, that calculus is changing day by day regardless. In the second chapter people will be complaining that robots put them out of work.

Overall it seems that American corporate has become embedded in overseas environments and has been fighting other cultures. Tesla in Scandinavia has a more public appearing problem.

Did you stop using AWS? Amazon's retail costs them money, AWS nets them profit. If you think about it, buying from Amazon is kinda like stealing from them.

You often can’t stop acquaintances from doing things you don’t condone, but you can stop associating with them and being privy or party to their nonsense.

I can’t stop Amazon from being assholes, but it says something about me if I still participate, let others participate on my behalf.

> The man didn't seem to want to quit...

For a lot of people quitting (or losing their job) is not an option. I'm sure if they had a choice they wouldn't work in such a place as Amazon warehouse. Let's not blame the victim, we should punish Amazon (and similar corporations) instead.

It makes me sad and angry that such things can happen - unfortunately I can't boycot them more than I do already. I'll stop boycotting them when they start treating their employees right... Not holding my breath though.

> The man didn't seem to want to quit, from the context, it's possible the person did not tell the truth. He may have worked himself too hard, I've known many people that just didn't quit.

Did you read the whole article carefully? There's a detailed description of the events that led to his death, and how the company's treatment of him and of his requests and complaints directly contributed to his death.

For some people, quitting their job is a financial death sentence.

It should be unsurprising that people continue to work at a job where they think it may negatively impact their health, rather than quitting, which they know will have serious consequences for them.

No, of course it’s not easy to quit. But perhaps it’s wrong to even offer these terrible jobs as an “opportunity” to people who have so little choice.

[flagged]

> From defending Amazon's right to pay low wages to “it's easy, just quit” demonstrates the disconnection of NH people with reality to the point of full psychopathy.

You seem to be under impression that people who express this view do not have sympathy for the workers. That's not true. We just refuse to accept that an employer becomes responsible for a person's condition just because he chooses to purchase the person's labour.

When you hire a plumber to fix your pipes, or buy tomatoes from a farmer, you don't become responsible for their condition. You don't have an obligation to pay higher than a market rate, or to continue paying them when you no longer want to. Why would you expect a full-time employer to have these obligations?

This doesn't have anything to do with sympathy. My sympathy for the poor people drives to me donate a significant proportion of my income. But I don't have any right to force my notion on charity on other people or organisations.

What do I need to do for you today? Cover up your mistakes? Deal with the admin you are slacking on? Pull you into the conference room and reteach you electricity and magnetism? Give you a pat on the back? Throw you softball projects that will make you look like a superstar? Climb into the tight places you cant fit? Send you the job application to fill out? Fill it out for you?

There is little doubt who the nicest person is at work, and I feel terrible about the trajectories of everyone elses lives. Though, I am at a loss, what more do I need to do? Would the true kindness be in having these people fired, because otherwise they will die on the job?

> The reason for the poor view of the NH community (outside NH) is clear from the opinions expressed here.

Where does HN have a poor reputation? Whenever I've seen it mentioned, its either been by other users of the site or people who generally view it favorably (largely due to the post quality).

The only place I've come across that has a particular disdain for it is /g/, but they hate everyone so thats to be expected.

It's a population of mostly tech workers, a population of which a large segment has mostly never experienced the labor market as others do, and of which an at least significant segment has been inundated with messaging that implies that they have more in common with the people who own tech companies than other workers. The massive layoffs that occasionally happen show some of them that this is a fiction, but survivorship bias is strong in the presence of so many smart-sounding people saying people who are harmed by a system simply failed in some personal sense (or, often, as seen in this thread, chose their outcome intentionally).

It seems deeply out of touch and unempathetic because it is, and that's the point of it

You say this, and yet there are plenty of people in the comments here defending the worker who died on the job, and the woman interviewed for the story.

Yes, there are a lot of heartless people here who seem to think that capitalism trumps all. And there are some who are so insulated by their privileged bubble that they can't understand the idea that quitting a job can mean financial ruin for a huge number of people.

But I don't see the overwhelming level of awfulness that you see.

Even the managers hate them. They make hiring such a pita

But as frequently stated, Human Resources is not for the employees. It's even in the name. Humans are just a Resource. The whole point of HR is to ensure the company is legally safe from their employees and legislation.

If you own a company, you'll love HR. If you work for a company, hate them.

I think the department name is pretty telling: Human Resources.

They do the same thing as the IT department, but instead of dealing with printers they deal with people.

If your printer is having issues printing or wants to take some time off, you throw it away and get a new one.

HR is just a staff department. This is about company culture, not HR.

The family of that employee asked everybody involved, including Amazon, to avoid public comments.

What does that have to do with Amazon? Genuine question.

Amazon should be held accountable for running a safe workplace. Even if she is not there, Amazon should not be allowed to operate an unsafe workhouse that puts its employees in danger. If Amazon has a culture of firing anyone who dares to speak up about unsafe working conditions, it will be allowed to abuse and endanger its employees for profit since no one would be willing to speak up for fear of losing the paycheck that puts a roof over their head and food on their plate.

I didn't know you could get fired from Amazon besides stealing most people just quit.

Your framing is a bit disingenuous.

For one, there’s, of course, the simple matter that these kinds of things shouldn’t happen and that cases like hers bring it to light.

The implied alternative by you would mean companies can keep being poor employers because people would walk away, and nothing would change for the ones that stay behind and are affected by it.

And then there’s, of course, your implication that everyone is in the fortunate position of being able to walk away from a job or let go from a job without the slightest inconvenience.

In reality, a lot of people work because they have to survive. Losing a job can be an earth-shattering experience for many because of the implications it has on their ability to survive.

The solution to employers creating poor or dangerous work conditions isn’t to say, “Let the market sort it out,” and then blame the victims. The solution is to regulate employers and to punish them hard and often when they create those work conditions.

The main reason for this is because of the highly skewed power balance. One side has a fundamental need for survival, the need for money to pay for shelter and food, while the other side mainly has to worry about shareholder value and profits.

This power imbalance always ensures there will be people desperate enough to take on any job, no matter how shitty or dangerous, to the point that they’ll even rationalize it and delude themselves.

One way to balance out the powers a bit more is regulation on working conditions, and another is creating social safety nets and improving standards of living that guarantee a level of survival regardless of whether you hold a job or not, which allows people to walk away from poor working conditions.

It is in countries where these measures are lacking or non/existent, where you see many people taking up jobs that have questionable or outright poor working conditions.

This is why you see a proliferation of gig workers, MLMs, and people willing to take on jobs with poor pay and poor working conditions in those countries. You’ll also see the exploitation of people with lesser legal protections in those countries, such as children or undocumented immigrants.

Ironically, in countries with better regulations and where they facilitate programs that ensure everyone can survive regardless of employment status, you’ll see more of the classical “free market” effects you allude to.

People who walk away from a job that has poor working conditions or people who won’t even take up a job with such conditions, which in turn motivates employers to improve the working conditions beyond the minimum conditions as prescribed in regulation. It turns out that when people don’t have to worry about being homeless and hungry, people can negotiate better working conditions, even if the negotiations are done with their feet.

What does that solve? Amazon employees an uncountable number of people. Put them all out of a job?

Edit: Wild that HN would downvote me on this. OP says: "short term thinking". Is that supposed to be for me or them?

I'm old enough to remember when Amazon was a welcome change from the local B&N/Walmart/Target/CVS/BestBuy landscape. Amazon was amazing to have the choice and much lower prices. Sure its maybe too big now but we're all much better for it.

Nah, unionize and report to regulators as much as possible. Can't succeed in the worker version of the Kobayashi Maru by "starting your own Amazon." Seek leverage and engage it to maximum force.

Companies will never give a shit about you, put them in a box like you would a shark. Don't play by existing broken rules, you will just suffer.

Useless advice for anyone who lacks the capital access to start a business, which is most people.

Are you seriously suggesting somebody working a poverty-level wage in an Amazon dystopia in Poland just... quit and start a business?

That's pretty much all tech companies besides some young startups.

"leave instead of trying to change things" - yeah how about no? I applaud everyone brave enough to stand up for their rights like this.

Why should you quit when you can organise better working conditions?

Quitting your job and finding another one better is a privilege few workers have, not the norm.

Many people live paycheck to paycheck and do not have the privilege to quit and search for a better job.

The word "just" here implies quitting is a simple solution. For most people quitting is anything but simple. Leaving a job can be costly and risky, if not outright dangerous. Rather than suggesting people quit their jobs if their jobs are awful, we can attempt to build a society where providing awful jobs is not permissible, specially when the cost of being less awful is not a huge for the employer.

In Poland quitting a job without breaking the law after being employed for more than 3 years is a relatively complicated 3-to-4-month-long process.

They don't have to pay well, people working that kind of job don't have a whole lot of options. One leaves 10 more want to take their place. Employers are having a very easy time of it.

I hate this line with a burning passion. We can and should do better, but comparisons to slavery just show how completely ignorant many people are of the horrors of slavery at every stage of history.

There's no comparison between the plight of an Amazon worker who loses a job unjustly and the millions of people who were (and still are!) treated as literal chattel to be bought, sold, separated from family, mutilated, raped and killed at a whim.

I'm having such a difficult time parsing this comment. What do you mean to say with those first two paragraphs?

>> their joints creak going up stairs

Maybe they ARE trying. Perhaps you don’t know what they are struggling with. Maybe their bodies ache all day long every day, but what keeps them going is providing for their loved ones.

Getting old sucks. Your mind is fine but your body lags behind. I’ve noticed it a lot more after turning 40. My issue, as I’m sure everyone’s issue, is that in my mind I clearly remember being able to do things physically with excellence that today would send me to the hospital. Skateboarding (I can still kickflip), snowboarding, fighting (for sport, like mma), volunteering for habitat for humanity building homes (can’t do that no more). The best thing is that I work with computers so my job job isn’t physically demanding but boy does it suck bending over to drop trash in the waste bin only to have your back slip out.

> As to the interviewee, did you take pictures? Because you dont deny it, and you know that you are jepordizing the livelihoods of over a million of my coworkers in doing so.

I don’t understand the jeopardy from taking pictures. I understand it’s probably against the rules at Amazon.

I also noticed that some people just don't care about themselves much. I know a person who opens beers with their front teeth. Many people seek abusive relationships. They don't have self preservation or their own well being as a core concept and it is sad. You're the only other person who seems to have seen this kind of character.

Unions won't save them, his mental health is being weaponized into politics.