Looks like our hometown company has really hit the big time:
Workers in an Amazon.com warehouse were routinely sent to the emergency room because of sweltering, suffocating heat that sometimes exceeded 110 degrees — and because Amazon refused to open warehouse doors, fearing theft, according to a devastating exposé in the Allentown, Pennsylvania Morning Call. After workers, an E.R. doctor and a security guard complained, federal regulators investigated the warehouse and recommended changes. Amazon responded with popsicles, bandanas and finger pointing.
From the original article that begins with Amazon warehouse worker Elmer Goris:
One hot day, Goris said, he saw a co-worker pass out at the water fountain. On other hot days, he saw paramedics bring people out of the warehouse in wheelchairs and on stretchers. “I never felt like passing out in a warehouse and I never felt treated like a piece of crap in any other warehouse but this one,” Goris said. “They can do that because there aren’t any jobs in the area.”
Goris’ complaints are not unique.
Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it’s like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get…
Amazon has apparently responded by taking out an ad seeking an “onsite medical representative” 11 miles away in Breinigsville to “provide first aid treatment to injured employees.”
I worked for them for a couple of weeks in ’97. While this is far worse than anything I experienced or witnessed, it doesn’t surprise me. Their employees are nothing but meat to them. I would advise anyone against working for them, or any comany started by anyone who used to manage there. Fuck Amazon.
Yes, well if we just get rid of OSHA and NIOSH like republicants want, then pesky little problems such as this will simply disappear, right?
Rabble rabble worthless lazy louts should be glad to have ANY job in this economy I’m sure there are plenty of people who would line up to take their place etc. etc. corporations are people guys and so on
Bezos needs these workers to economize further so he can catch up – he’s down to #13 on the rich list, hardly even $19 billion to his name any more. He’s now behind Mayor Bloomberg for heaven’s sake. Imagine that – less titanically rich than a public servant. Shudder.
given what i’ve heard from my friends who have worked for them in an engineering capacity, this does not surprise me.
Weird – no trolls telling us that this is what commerce looks like.
i know someone who develops software for them who works in an air-conditioned office with a lake view and was recently awarded 25,000 in stock. huh.
I bet a union would help.
I work in a warehouse (not Amazon), and having worked through a heatwave, this doesn’t surprise me at all. It wasn’t quite as hot (thanks to geography), but throwing around boxes in 90+ degree heat does take a lot out of you. My bosses did give extra breaks, but that’s about it. They didn’t lower expectations, nor did they turn on the ventilation fans in the morning when it would have helped. The cherry on the top, though, is that the AC for the office spaces where the big cheese sits is output into the warehouse. Yep, they bask in their cool air, and send the heat into the warehouse for us peons to deal with.
Oh, and there is no chance in hell a union will form. When half the workforce listens to Rush Limbaugh, there is no hope.
Okay #6…..ah..This is what capitalism looks like! Don’t you understand if those windows were open Bezos wouldn’t be really free….keep your unions off of American Business..
You know number 6….my heart just isn’t into it on this one.
Just remember, the only good rich person is one lying in the street with their throat cut. (THAT I can get into!)
“Onsite Medical Representative”!? Why not just buy a fucking air conditioner!?
@9 “Oh, and there is no chance in hell a union will form. When half the workforce listens to Rush Limbaugh, there is no hope.”
I hear you, brother/sister 🙁 It’s disheartening sometimes. People who crap on their own eating dish, like pigs.
If it’s anything like when I worked there, most of the workforce are temps waiting to get weeded out.
How about the “sweat shop” conditions right here in Seattle? Sure, doofuses with desks can take their freaking DOGS to work (see Portlandia), but is it really such a great place to work?
Re: “Rush Limbaugh” listeners in a sweating-shop:
The radio show “Thunk Tank” on WFMU recently featured a comment to the effect that much of modern life appears figuratively to have been designed by Temple Grandin. Who needs Pinkertons or men with shock-sticks when the arrangement is designed such that we will never notice the chute, and find it quite pleasant walking in, we’ll be exercising our freedom….
It sounds like the real culprit is the design of the warehouse…I mean there’s nothing specifically heat generating about the products Amazon sells right? And yet this is the only hot warehouse in all of Pennsylvania?? Some part of this story is missing…
@14: “How about the “sweat shop” conditions right here in Seattle? Sure, doofuses with desks can take their freaking DOGS to work (see Portlandia), but is it really such a great place to work?”
Do you have anything to offer but bullshit implications?
@16 The difference is that apparently other warehouses open their fucking doors to let air circulate while this one doesn’t.
Well thank goodness we’ve destroyed the unions. These people would be in real trouble then. Sure, if they were unionized they would be paid better, more of them would be full time and get health benefits, they’d have AC or at least better air circulation, safe working environment but…hold on…there’s a downside here somewhere, I just can’t think of it off the top of my head.
Oh yeah! They would have to pay a small fraction of their income to the union so they can continue to represent them. Damn, that would sure suck a lot more than passing out from heat exhaustion and being carried to the hospital.
I’d speculate that AMZN Ops Mgt cares about this issue. They don’t want people getting sick, they don’t want bad PR, and they have an economic incentive to solve the problem because excessive heat makes the workers less productive. But cooling a 1,000,000 sq ft of high bay storage space (with mezzanines and motorized material handling equipment) is a difficult problem. In drier climates evaporative cooling systems can help. Fans often just blow the heat around. Opening the dock doors often just lets more heat in. (The tarmac around the dock is a huge heat sink.) Painting the roof white or silver can help. but otherwise the company needs to invest a lot of money into putting some very large A/C’s in (a leased bldg) that will run for a few weeks each year. I’d guess that someone underestimated high humidity PA summers, but I’d bet that Facilities will be all over this before next summer.
Hopefully, Amazon will move quickly to improve the ventilation in the warehouse.
Remembering the death of Dr. Alice Hamilton on this day in 1970 ~ who fought to make the workplace safer.