I didn't boycott them for political reasons, just because they're a shit business. All they sell is cheap Chinese garbage and overpriced American garbage. Their "2-day shipping" became 7-day shipping even with a Prime account directly after the pandemic. It's just not a pleasant place to shop anymore.
Just an FYI, I paid $28k for my house in the US, not condemed. My neighbor bought theirs for $29k. Lots of cheap houses in nice towns in the US. And if you can work remotely, no reason to live in a high cost of living area. Perhaps you shouldn't weigh On a topic you know nothing about.
LOL I live in an area that ranks in the top 10 in lowest cost of living in the United States. Houses here start at 100,000 for a thousand square foot home falling down around itself.
Unless you bought a meth mobile home with fire damage, you live on a half-acre of land with no house (Starting at $29,000 here) or... an outhouse.
No, and during the four years I was looking about houses, I found them in a lot of areas. I set the upper limit at $60k inZillow and searched the Midwest. It’s a house built in 1951 on a city lot. It’s not a meth house. It does need work, but it’s not trashed. I could show you the official documents that show the purchase price, but you’d find a way to disbelieve that too.
Last time I dealt with a union vote, it was at a sewing factory. Workers bought it after the company shipped jobs overseas. The woman that had been shop steward spoke against the union. She said they’d done nothing, when she tried to work with them and would cause the factory to close. Workers voted against the union. In real life, you will find many ex-union workers with the same story.
I don’t know what “real life” you are in. I know you hate WA for its taxes. I suspect you are in a red state. I am sorry you have no experiences of communal effort, but I am not sure you would see them.
The real life example was in Spokane. My husband had similar isues with a couple of unions in OR. Unions don’t create a single job, unless you count working for the union as a job. WA used to be a nice place to live, but that “communal effort” has ruined the state and made it unaffordable. I moved to a state where I was able to buy a house for $28,000. And the cost of living is low, as is the cost of gas. Please feel free to enjoy your workers’ paradise in my absence.
You do realize that that cheapness is at the cost of workers and communities elsewhere. You mistake the inequities of capitalism for “real life.” Capital just shifts the burden to others who are weaker. There are unions working for their members, but there is no “union” doing stuff “for” people. The workers are the union. If you want a better union, join your co-workers and organize. Those taxes pay for everybody not just you to “have nice things.” That’s reality.
There is 0 chance you bought a non-condemned house for "$28,000." Not sure what country you're manipulating from, but even in "low cost of living" areas, houses are well over $150,000 now, even shitheap mobile homes. There's zero chance you're actually in America right now.
I can say that after helping to unionize my workplace, wages across the board increased by 40%, some of my coworkers have even been able to afford their own homes. Benefits have also increased and - unsuprisingly - the company continues to be massively profitable, even recently completing a 7,000 square foot warehouse expansion.
Sure, I pay union dues, but I'm pretty sure the $14 is worth it considering I also make about $400 more per paycheck.
Shout out to CWA Local #4652
But sure keep regurgitating brainless talking points that you have been fed with nothing to back it up.
You have nothing to back yours up with. It's your experience and you are pro union. Mine is based on my experience and that of my husband and is as valid as yours. We'll see how long it lasts.
I live near here and did not see or hear this on the news or in local papers. This is maddening. Time to write to my local congress rep both state and national. There needs to be an investigation. Accidents can happen but the handling of it is unacceptable.
They don't handle stories like this all that much because you can't argue with a straight face that grinding a warehouse/factory to a halt is a safe thing to do. No time for eulogies, if some of that machinery or the people stopped, there really would be deaths from that. If you're doing assembly line work, it's entirely possible to work around 2,000 people and only know a couple of them. This wasn't school.
50 years ago, this is a few lines in a local paper because that's all it really is. But perpetual outrage machine. "Why didn't the supervisor have a funeral on the spot?!" "Why didn't he grab a megaphone and instantly let 2,000 workers know someone died." Because that would be dangerous? You’ve got thousands of people crammed in a space with heavy machinery and conveyer belts, the last thing you want is panic.
I have so many questions about the safety training (are there AEDs, where are they, who is trained in CPR and were they on duty and notified that day).
The death part is difficult and honestly I don't think any managers are trained in how to handle it. I have an office job and when our manager died offsite no one knew what to do with our team that day so we had to take the initiative to make sure the other team members who weren't in the office were notified and then take care of ourselves that day and the following days. I imagine it's much worse at a warehouse where the work in theory can't stop, but should.
My ex worked in a UPS warehouse for a couple of months, just to make some extra money. Apparently it can be deathly dangerous to abruptly stop work. They never had anyone die, but because of the heat, people passed out a lot. You were taught to just hope the best for them and keep it moving because if some of the work stopped, people could be hurt or die, too. So "keep working" was a safety motto.
We had a death in an Amazon warehouse several years ago in my state. Big cover up ensued. The death was a result of inappropriate training, but Amazon tried to claim the victim was drug impaired. At the time the state was trying to score the Amazon headquarters so the state also engaged in muddying the water. Bad business all around. The company needs to be broken up and sold for spare parts.
This is why I left the US and moved to Europe. I have now been in Germany for 17 years, and I cannot fathom how I managed to survive working in the US for over 22 years without realizing just how far behind the rest of the civilized world it has fallen.
Over here, we have actual worker protections. My health insurance is not tied to my job, and there is a level of work-life balance that I could only have dreamed of in the US. I also have 35 days of paid vacation, and the concept of "sick days" in the American sense does not exist. Here, if you are sick you are sick. You are not docked vacation days and cannot be "reprimanded" for just being sick.
Something like what is reported in this article is unheard of here. America is, in many ways, still stuck in the late 19th to early 20th century in how workers are treated. The worst part is that many people are actually proud of it, including those in this comment thread arguing against unions.
Americans need to wake up to how poorly they are being treated and how much worse their lives are compared to other OECD countries. Things don't need to be this way.
Wow! Ive watched a lot of history dating back to the Turn of the century coming into the 20th century (1900) to current and it seems that we are or have fast tracked back to the early 1900’s. I don’t know when that happened but it’s pretty obvious.
I also remember a time when it was a big deal to be a millionaire and even huge to be a multimillionaire but we are in a whole new Rhelm.
I cannot help but make a really strange comparison with this Disease, Sickness with wealth acquisition today and the fantastical degree it’s got to. When we are talking about billionaires on a competition to become the first Trillionaire then it’s obviously being made up somewhere and I’m pretty sure most people know that answer. The top wealth is sucking the life out of workers 1920 style ( low pay, harsh working conditions, lacking benefits), all in pursuit of more money they could spend in 100 or more lifetimes.
America went thru an opioid epidemic and got very bad after we bailed the wealthy out in 2008 and yeah, drugs, alcohol etc are a natural thing to turn to for a lot of people who try their best but don’t see a positive outlook in life. It’s just a human behavior that people do.
Well, this same principle applies to wealth acquisition today with those high earners who go to the country club with other high earners and make bets with each other on who will become the first Trillionaire. When those at the top buy our politicians ( Citizens United) and have all Rules and regulations removed so they can make more and more wealth at our expense and they aim to lock that in by taking over our government completely with AI and hoarding us like cattle because once they have that complete lock down in place & with the lowest possible operating costs in order to become the first Trillionaire then I say that qualifies as a Disease or Sickness of the Mind and is no different that the effect of the opioid crisis or any other sickness or condition.
What I can say is if it were that manager that was on the floor and if he had a family and children then I’m sure he would have wanted to be saved if possible BUT!!!
Here is the fucking kicker! And prepare yourself because I know a certain Mega grocery store does this with their employees.
That person who lost his life just paid Amazon probably a Million Dollars and was a bigger profit to them ( I say most likely) because it’s likely that Amazon had taken life insurance out on every employee for accidental death. How many people know that?
Yep, your employer most likely had a million dollar insurance policy they can take out on you and they get paid, Not the family but guess who?
So in all reality, once that employee lost his life he became part of an executives bonus fucking pay!
That’s how horrible you people have it today and this has to change bcz America is the richest country in human history but they are not talking about its citizens, they are talking about its corporations and CEO’s.
Go ahead, check it out. I bet you that Amazon has life insurance out on every worker they have. But its employees most likely couldn’t afford that bcz they won’t get a group discount.
Why the wealthy have a disease of the mind and when too much wealth kills a country and we are in the shit of it right now.
I know it’s easy to say but every person should walk the fuck off the job. That’s the only way you’ll ever get respect and fair pay and benefits.
A worker passed out at a warehouse, where things need to keep moving or people could, I don't know, die, and this is weird how? lol Someone passed out. CPR was started and an ambulance was called.
In some of those factories, if you stop your job, shit falls on other people. Spinning "A worker passed out and left in an ambulance" into "How evil!" is an internet thing. Bodies for clicks.
Stop buying from Amazon. Think about people working in these conditions. Nothing i need is worth working like this. I can’t in good conscience buy from Amazon
This is why we need to boycott Amazon, permanently, AND why we need unions.
I already boycott Amazon. Have been for years.
Excellent!
I never buy from Amazon. I've been a Bezos hater for years.
I dropped them from my personally approved retailers two years ago. Haven't missed them a bit.
I didn't boycott them for political reasons, just because they're a shit business. All they sell is cheap Chinese garbage and overpriced American garbage. Their "2-day shipping" became 7-day shipping even with a Prime account directly after the pandemic. It's just not a pleasant place to shop anymore.
Just an FYI, I paid $28k for my house in the US, not condemed. My neighbor bought theirs for $29k. Lots of cheap houses in nice towns in the US. And if you can work remotely, no reason to live in a high cost of living area. Perhaps you shouldn't weigh On a topic you know nothing about.
LOL I live in an area that ranks in the top 10 in lowest cost of living in the United States. Houses here start at 100,000 for a thousand square foot home falling down around itself.
Unless you bought a meth mobile home with fire damage, you live on a half-acre of land with no house (Starting at $29,000 here) or... an outhouse.
There is zero chance you're an American.
Oh, and I'm in rural KS. Moved here from WA state
No, and during the four years I was looking about houses, I found them in a lot of areas. I set the upper limit at $60k inZillow and searched the Midwest. It’s a house built in 1951 on a city lot. It’s not a meth house. It does need work, but it’s not trashed. I could show you the official documents that show the purchase price, but you’d find a way to disbelieve that too.
This is why we need unions.
And the unions will take their money and do nothing.
Nonsense.
Last time I dealt with a union vote, it was at a sewing factory. Workers bought it after the company shipped jobs overseas. The woman that had been shop steward spoke against the union. She said they’d done nothing, when she tried to work with them and would cause the factory to close. Workers voted against the union. In real life, you will find many ex-union workers with the same story.
I don’t know what “real life” you are in. I know you hate WA for its taxes. I suspect you are in a red state. I am sorry you have no experiences of communal effort, but I am not sure you would see them.
The real life example was in Spokane. My husband had similar isues with a couple of unions in OR. Unions don’t create a single job, unless you count working for the union as a job. WA used to be a nice place to live, but that “communal effort” has ruined the state and made it unaffordable. I moved to a state where I was able to buy a house for $28,000. And the cost of living is low, as is the cost of gas. Please feel free to enjoy your workers’ paradise in my absence.
How about you blame the company that moved the jobs overseas instead of the union trying to make sure jobs are safe and compensation is fair.
You do realize that that cheapness is at the cost of workers and communities elsewhere. You mistake the inequities of capitalism for “real life.” Capital just shifts the burden to others who are weaker. There are unions working for their members, but there is no “union” doing stuff “for” people. The workers are the union. If you want a better union, join your co-workers and organize. Those taxes pay for everybody not just you to “have nice things.” That’s reality.
There is 0 chance you bought a non-condemned house for "$28,000." Not sure what country you're manipulating from, but even in "low cost of living" areas, houses are well over $150,000 now, even shitheap mobile homes. There's zero chance you're actually in America right now.
Fuck off, boot licker.
I can say that after helping to unionize my workplace, wages across the board increased by 40%, some of my coworkers have even been able to afford their own homes. Benefits have also increased and - unsuprisingly - the company continues to be massively profitable, even recently completing a 7,000 square foot warehouse expansion.
Sure, I pay union dues, but I'm pretty sure the $14 is worth it considering I also make about $400 more per paycheck.
Shout out to CWA Local #4652
But sure keep regurgitating brainless talking points that you have been fed with nothing to back it up.
You have nothing to back yours up with. It's your experience and you are pro union. Mine is based on my experience and that of my husband and is as valid as yours. We'll see how long it lasts.
I live near here and did not see or hear this on the news or in local papers. This is maddening. Time to write to my local congress rep both state and national. There needs to be an investigation. Accidents can happen but the handling of it is unacceptable.
I think so much of the traditional media is afraid to take on stories like this and hold people accountable. That's why The Western Edge exists.
They don't handle stories like this all that much because you can't argue with a straight face that grinding a warehouse/factory to a halt is a safe thing to do. No time for eulogies, if some of that machinery or the people stopped, there really would be deaths from that. If you're doing assembly line work, it's entirely possible to work around 2,000 people and only know a couple of them. This wasn't school.
50 years ago, this is a few lines in a local paper because that's all it really is. But perpetual outrage machine. "Why didn't the supervisor have a funeral on the spot?!" "Why didn't he grab a megaphone and instantly let 2,000 workers know someone died." Because that would be dangerous? You’ve got thousands of people crammed in a space with heavy machinery and conveyer belts, the last thing you want is panic.
Unless it is an immigrant committing a crime. Then it is nonstop. Every other time there has been a death of a worker, it is at the top of the news.
This is great and important reporting.
I have so many questions about the safety training (are there AEDs, where are they, who is trained in CPR and were they on duty and notified that day).
The death part is difficult and honestly I don't think any managers are trained in how to handle it. I have an office job and when our manager died offsite no one knew what to do with our team that day so we had to take the initiative to make sure the other team members who weren't in the office were notified and then take care of ourselves that day and the following days. I imagine it's much worse at a warehouse where the work in theory can't stop, but should.
My ex worked in a UPS warehouse for a couple of months, just to make some extra money. Apparently it can be deathly dangerous to abruptly stop work. They never had anyone die, but because of the heat, people passed out a lot. You were taught to just hope the best for them and keep it moving because if some of the work stopped, people could be hurt or die, too. So "keep working" was a safety motto.
We had a death in an Amazon warehouse several years ago in my state. Big cover up ensued. The death was a result of inappropriate training, but Amazon tried to claim the victim was drug impaired. At the time the state was trying to score the Amazon headquarters so the state also engaged in muddying the water. Bad business all around. The company needs to be broken up and sold for spare parts.
Thank you for doing this reporting, hopefully it will spur further action from both the public and our elected officials.
These corporations will not change unless we force them to.
Did anyone call 911? Even if the victim was clearly dead, that's pretty standard and results in a police record.
Yes, a few employees did call 911. Those details were added to the story after we received those records from our public records request this morning.
I have heard that cell phones aren't allowed on the warehouse floor. Someone would have had to go somewhere to call.
This is why I left the US and moved to Europe. I have now been in Germany for 17 years, and I cannot fathom how I managed to survive working in the US for over 22 years without realizing just how far behind the rest of the civilized world it has fallen.
Over here, we have actual worker protections. My health insurance is not tied to my job, and there is a level of work-life balance that I could only have dreamed of in the US. I also have 35 days of paid vacation, and the concept of "sick days" in the American sense does not exist. Here, if you are sick you are sick. You are not docked vacation days and cannot be "reprimanded" for just being sick.
Something like what is reported in this article is unheard of here. America is, in many ways, still stuck in the late 19th to early 20th century in how workers are treated. The worst part is that many people are actually proud of it, including those in this comment thread arguing against unions.
Americans need to wake up to how poorly they are being treated and how much worse their lives are compared to other OECD countries. Things don't need to be this way.
Amazon workers BEWARE!!
If you have a medical emergency and drop to the floor, NOBODY will come to help you!!
Did you read the story? They did go to help the person. CPR was started and an ambulance called. What else could you do from there?
Fascism FAKES empathy!! 💀
Amazon does not even pretend to have empathy. I will say that for them.
Wow! Ive watched a lot of history dating back to the Turn of the century coming into the 20th century (1900) to current and it seems that we are or have fast tracked back to the early 1900’s. I don’t know when that happened but it’s pretty obvious.
I also remember a time when it was a big deal to be a millionaire and even huge to be a multimillionaire but we are in a whole new Rhelm.
I cannot help but make a really strange comparison with this Disease, Sickness with wealth acquisition today and the fantastical degree it’s got to. When we are talking about billionaires on a competition to become the first Trillionaire then it’s obviously being made up somewhere and I’m pretty sure most people know that answer. The top wealth is sucking the life out of workers 1920 style ( low pay, harsh working conditions, lacking benefits), all in pursuit of more money they could spend in 100 or more lifetimes.
America went thru an opioid epidemic and got very bad after we bailed the wealthy out in 2008 and yeah, drugs, alcohol etc are a natural thing to turn to for a lot of people who try their best but don’t see a positive outlook in life. It’s just a human behavior that people do.
Well, this same principle applies to wealth acquisition today with those high earners who go to the country club with other high earners and make bets with each other on who will become the first Trillionaire. When those at the top buy our politicians ( Citizens United) and have all Rules and regulations removed so they can make more and more wealth at our expense and they aim to lock that in by taking over our government completely with AI and hoarding us like cattle because once they have that complete lock down in place & with the lowest possible operating costs in order to become the first Trillionaire then I say that qualifies as a Disease or Sickness of the Mind and is no different that the effect of the opioid crisis or any other sickness or condition.
What I can say is if it were that manager that was on the floor and if he had a family and children then I’m sure he would have wanted to be saved if possible BUT!!!
Here is the fucking kicker! And prepare yourself because I know a certain Mega grocery store does this with their employees.
That person who lost his life just paid Amazon probably a Million Dollars and was a bigger profit to them ( I say most likely) because it’s likely that Amazon had taken life insurance out on every employee for accidental death. How many people know that?
Yep, your employer most likely had a million dollar insurance policy they can take out on you and they get paid, Not the family but guess who?
So in all reality, once that employee lost his life he became part of an executives bonus fucking pay!
That’s how horrible you people have it today and this has to change bcz America is the richest country in human history but they are not talking about its citizens, they are talking about its corporations and CEO’s.
Go ahead, check it out. I bet you that Amazon has life insurance out on every worker they have. But its employees most likely couldn’t afford that bcz they won’t get a group discount.
Why the wealthy have a disease of the mind and when too much wealth kills a country and we are in the shit of it right now.
I know it’s easy to say but every person should walk the fuck off the job. That’s the only way you’ll ever get respect and fair pay and benefits.
So it's a Gulag ?
one word - Brutal
Amazon represents the NewNormal in so many ways…
A worker passed out at a warehouse, where things need to keep moving or people could, I don't know, die, and this is weird how? lol Someone passed out. CPR was started and an ambulance was called.
In some of those factories, if you stop your job, shit falls on other people. Spinning "A worker passed out and left in an ambulance" into "How evil!" is an internet thing. Bodies for clicks.
Hmmm…
Someone should sets this warehouse on fiyah.
Stop buying from Amazon. Think about people working in these conditions. Nothing i need is worth working like this. I can’t in good conscience buy from Amazon