Big tech CEOs are the robber barons of the 21st century. Revenues at many of the biggest Silicon Valley companies are predicated on suppressing worker compensation and rights. Our addiction to the convenience of their products and services make too many of us complicit in that unethical behaviour.
Of the lot, Jeff Bezos is the worst. Amazon has a grisly body count thanks to his inhumane policies. On top of that, he’s had direct involvement in smear campaigns against workers that do rise up.
15 dead
Jeff Lockhart, 29, was a contract worker at an Amazon warehouse in Chester, Va. Lockhart suffered a cardiac arrest after an overnight shift. He died on January 19th, 2013.
Roland Smith, 57, was a contract worker at an Amazon warehouse in Avenel, New Jersey. Smith was dragged and crushed by a conveyor belt. He was killed on December 4th, 2013.
Jody Rhoads, 52, was a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Rhoads was crushed and pinned by a pallet loader. He was killed on June 1st, 2014.
Name unknown, crushed to death by a forklift at an Amazon warehouse in Fernley, Nevada on November 4th, 2014.
Thomas Becker, 57, was a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Joliet, Illinois. Becker suffered a cardiac arrest at work. He died on Jan. 23, 2017.
Devan Michael Shoemaker, 28, was a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (where Rhoads was also killed). Shoemaker was run over by a truck. He was killed on Sept. 19, 2017.
Phillip Terry, 59, was a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Plainfield, Indiana. Terry’s head was crushed by a forklift. He was killed on September 23, 2017
Karla Kay Arnold, 50, was a worker at an an Amazon warehouse in Monee, Illinois. Arnold sustained multiple injuries after she was hit by an SUV in the parking lot. She died on October 23, 2017.
Andrew Lindsay and Israel Espana Argote were contract workers at an Amazon warehouse in Baltimore, Maryland. They were crushed by a wall collapse during a severe storm. They died on November 3, 2018.
Brien James Daunt, 42, was a construction worker building an Amazon warehouse in Oildale, California. Daunt fell from a dangerous height. He died on January 12, 2019.
Ricky Blakely, Conrad Jules Aska and Sean Archuleta were contract pilots. Their Air Atlas plane, carrying cargo for Amazon, crashed into Trinity Bay, near Texas. They died on February 23, 2019.
Billy Foister, 48, was a worker at an Amazon warehouse in in Etna, Ohio. Foister suffered a cardiac arrest at work. He died on September 2, 2019.
The Needless and Tragic Death of Billy Foister
Billy Foister’s case is a sad exemplar of the culture driving all this death.
A week before his death, Billy went to the warehouse’s clinic and reported headaches and chest pains. Eager to get Billy back on the floor, the clinician did four things. They took his blood pressure, told him he was dehydrated, gave him two beverages to drink, and sent him back to work.
A few days before his death, Billy was reprimanded by a manager two minutes after placing an item into the wrong box. Two minutes later. Two fucking minutes.
When Billy had his heart attack he was writhing on the ground for twenty minutes before anyone came to his aid. Foister was taken to a hospital where efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. Amazon to this day insists Billy did not die on their premises.
A coworker said, “After the incident, everyone was forced to go back to work. No time to decompress. Basically watch a man pass away and then get told to go back to work, everyone, and act like it’s fine.”
“There was no reason for my brother to have died. He went to AmCare complaining about chest pains. He should have been sent to the hospital, not just sent back to work just to put things like toothpaste in a bin so somebody can get it in an hour,” Edward Foister said. “It seems Amazon values money way more than life. If they did their job right, I wouldn’t have had to bury my little brother.”
He’s not wrong.
Working Conditions at Amazon
Investigations into working conditions reveal the high cost workers pay for our convenience. Bezos’ vast wealth depends on brutal, relentless, inhumane treatment of labourers. Aside from the heightened risk of death, workers also suffer physical & emotional trauma.
Before the Trinity Bay crash, Atlas Air pilots told Business Insider “they thought an accident was inevitable due to rapid growth, low pay and inexperienced pilots taking to the skies.” Since the accident pilots have been protesting dismal working conditions and terrible contracts.
The Daily Beast reported on the mental duress warehouse workers endure. From 2013 to 2018 there were 189 calls to 911. The calls ranged from suicidal thoughts to suicide attempts and nervous breakdowns. Jace Crouch described it as an “isolating colony of hell.” Crouch was a former worker at an Amazon warehouse in Lakeland, Florida.
James Bloodworth, a reporter for The Guardian, went undercover as a worker at an Amazon warehouse in Rugeley, England. He found “a workplace environment in which decency, respect and dignity were absent.” One example he saw was workers pissing in Coke bottles instead of taking bathroom breaks. All due to threats of lost productivity and rampant performance monitoring.
Bloodworth also reported on how illnesses and sick days are tracked as misdemeanours that can lead to dismissal. The obvious and inevitable outcome of this is more workers get sick and injured. Freedom of information requests by the GMB union show over 600 ambulance calls in the UK over a three-year period. The Rugeley warehouse made 115 of them. A Tesco warehouse in the same area over the same period had only 8.
There are several cases where injured workers are treated poorly by Amazon. They are “being treated in ways that leave them homeless, unable to work, or bereft of income.” This is systemic legal abuse.
Agenda for Action
The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) and other groups are organising across the US to demand better of Amazon.
Workers and allies are driving calls for public accountability through demonstrations and walkouts.
COSH groups and other supporters are calling stronger protections for companies like Amazon that receive taxpayer subsidies. Such protections could include allowing workers to unionise.
There are calls to create shared accountability around healthy and safety issues between temp agencies and companies like Amazon.
The New Jersey Work Environment Council is developing a code of conduct for warehouses that receive public resources.
In Oakland, Worksafe and other advocates won a new law that established heat stress rules for indoor workers. Workers like Domingo Blancas have nearly died from working in metal containers over 110 degrees.
In Chicago, Warehouse Workers for Justiceand other supporters won a new state law that strengthens protections for temporary workers.
We must fight for better. Lives are at stake. One thing you might consider is donating to The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.
Collective action in the age of Covid-19
In the beforetime Amazon captured half of all online sales. That number is soaring as the pandemic exacerbates the winner-take-all zero-sum game on which big tech profits are predicated. On Thursday Amazon announced Q1 revenues of $74.5 billion. That’s a year-over-year increase of 26%. The “everything store” now makes more than $33 million an hour or $11,000 every second.
Unsurprising given Amazon’s atrocious history on worker safety the company has been failing its workers throughout the pandemic:
Early on the company failed to provide staff with personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks and gloves or even hand sanitiser
Social distancing is not enforced inside fulfilment centres
It avoids closing warehouses to do deep cleanings
It continues to under-report Covid-19 cases in its workforce
The company recently terminated its temporary policy of unlimited, unpaid time off
What has Amazon been investing in instead? Thermal cameras from blacklisted Chinese companies and heat maps highlighting stores at risk of unionising. Oh, and planning a smear campaign against Christian Smalls, whom they illegally fired for staging a walkout.
Workers have had enough. On May 1 2020, International Workers Day, Christian Smalls and other workers from workers rights groups representing employees at Amazon, Whole Foods, Target, Wal-Mart, InstaCart, and more staged an unprecedented strike. Never before have organisers brought together so many low-paid, non-unionised, temporary employees from such a large swatch of American companies.
And this is why in their own words:
“You either come to work or take an unpaid leave of absence,” said the worker, who has a serious underlying health condition. “If I miss one paycheck, it would mean I lose my vehicle, I lose my place to live. I lose everything.”
A Staten Island Amazon worker, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the company, has been on unpaid leave for more than a month. As someone with a number of underlying health conditions, the worker said contracting the virus would be “a death sentence.” They are surviving off meager savings and had to move into a friend’s home because they could no longer pay rent.
“They need to close down the warehouse and do a thorough, deep cleaning for it to be safe,” the worker told The Intercept. “If someone dies, they have blood on their hands.”
I am striking because of Amazon’s work environment is hard mentally, physically and emotionally. It’s sad we had to wait for a pandemic to get to this point, but I’m hoping this changes the work environment and labor as a whole for the future. Two things I wish the public knew about work conditions are that we get cases of COVID-19 daily and that there are no extra steps they’re taking besides the ones we have been doing since the pandemic started. We’re also being micromanaged all day everyday no matter what you do while we’re at work.
“We formed this alliance because we all have one common goal, and it’s to save our communities and save our families,” said Christian Smalls, the lead organizer of the strike and a former Amazon warehouse employee at its Staten Island, New York, facility.
It’s too early to tell what impact the strike will have. One thing though is clear. Essential workers have found their voice and new tools and methods to protest. Smalls and other leaders of the coalition planned the May Day action over encrypted messaging services like Telegram and Signal. They also gathered over Zoom with supporters like Jesse Jackson.
And while the pandemic itself meant strike attendance was limited, it by no means limited its reach. The action reverberated across social and traditional media. Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted in support of workers. News organisations from the Washington Post, the Los Angles Times, Vice and CNN covered the event. All in a time when customers are more grateful and dependent than ever on these historically invisible workers.
During all of this Jeff Bezos has added $24 billion to his own bottom line. Bezos is now worth $139 billion. That much money in the hands of one person is not only literally unimaginable, it’s unconscionable.
Amazon’s workers pay too-high a cost for our convenience. We can all do more to avoid lining this bastard’s pockets. And it’s well-past time we start.
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Originally published at 20 Minutes into the Future in two-parts: