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.
Cancel your Amazon subscription. Order direct. Shop locally. Understand you can do without a lot of crap you order. Even canceling a few months if you normally keep it all year is a start. They are going backwards to before labor laws. Soon they will stop paying altogether
I work for fedex for 18 years and you don't work at a company like that unless you want to work your butt off because that's what they expect. We were non-union and paid fairly.
After that I worked at the IRS for 12 years at this dreadful job where half the people just screwed around. Nobody cared. But several of the guys quit the IRS and went to work at Amazon and they love it but these are guys who knew how to work their butt off and didn't screw around at work.
Well I guess you missed my first comment that I made. The very first comment I made was yes they should have stopped work until an ambulance came home and picked up the employee and then maybe had a meeting about Safety in what happened.
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.
Do you know anything about labor history? The story of the union movement in America? I mean - have you done any research? Read a book? Your personal experience (probably informed by confirmation bias) is just anecdotal. 😊
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.
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.
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.
100% Where does the money from union dues actually go? While unions claim the money goes toward collective bargaining and protecting workers' rights, a significant portion is often used for union leader salaries, political contributions, overhead, and unrelated national campaigns. 2024 Tens of thousands of Michigan union members opted out of membership during the years the right-to-work law was in effect. This cost unions more than $50 million annually in lost dues.
In states with right-to-work laws, employees have the freedom to decline or resign from union membership, avoiding the obligation to pay dues. Conversely, in states without such laws, unions frequently include security clauses in their collective bargaining agreements, requiring the employees to join the union or provide financial support as a condition of employment. What’s more, union security clauses permit unions to force employers to discharge employees who refuse to do so. However, employees can become “Beck objectors,” paying only dues related to representational activities.
Exactly. Unfortunately, the best way to deal with a bad employer is to have the skills to find another job. And the best way to be able to find another job is to limit imigration and outsourcing. Everytime the labor market gets tight, they flood the market with workers.
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.
If someone wanted to dive into pdx amazon’s…. No training, no safety and run by kids fresh out of college with zero life skills…. Give them a title, a walkie talkie, and they’re experts!
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.
We remain confused why other local media has not picked up on this story. We operate from a mindset that all reporting on a topic is worth pursuing. The more reporters on this, the more informed the public will be. Thanks for reading and supporting us.
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.
Better yet, heavily fine and eliminate companies that lack compassion and show extremely poor judgment! Did the worker have survivor benefits for his family? Probably not. Today’s equivalent of legal slavery.
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.
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.
It freaks me out that managers need “training” to know what to do. 1) help or find someone who can 1a) call 911 2) stop the line, escort employees out of the warehouse 3) wait for an ambulance 4) reconvene staff and speak together about what they witnessed 5) if you have production targets that must be reached that day ask who wants to work overtime and donate extra money to the man’s family
I’ve been a manager where an employee died. People attended the funeral on company time, we fundraised for his family and I covered one whole wall (it was huge) with butcher paper and people wrote messages to him, left flowers and drew pictures. I left it up for a month and every Friday we read the new messages. We eventually made a video featuring the wall and shared it with the family. I did not receive training to do any of this. I just am a human person.
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.
If someone wanted to dive into pdx amazon’s…. No training, no safety and run by kids fresh out of college with zero life skills…. Give them a title, a walkie talkie, and they’re experts!
And the army peons who know that raising any concerns other than what snacks are in the vending machines will be met with intimidation and veiled threats
Why have they only released a single recording if three people called 911? I’d also like to see OSHA’s full investigation released alongside an independent third party investigation. Really I want the workers to be represented but it looks like the cover up has already begun.
There were three 911 calls that we received with our records request. We chose to only release one because they others had names of employees in them, and we didn't want to publish that information without their consent. The tape we chose to publish offered relevant information while keeping the caller anonymous. In one of the other calls, the dispatcher is instructing the workers on how to used the defibrillator.
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.
"People could die" from what? You keep acting like this warehouse makes things--it's distribution. They can absolutely stop forklifts and conveyor belts. Unless they are making life saving medicine/supplies, we can stop for a second. Sacrificing our humanity for progress should be avoided.
No more Amazon Prime. More consumers need to shop locally or go to the product maker's website to order.
For fuck sake, hasn't Amazon already demonstrated its true colors, treating employees like trash, before this horrific incident?
Imagine you're the mother of the human who died, watching how he was left there on the floor, only one person willing to try CPR to save him; the rest being told by shitty managers to ignore him and keep working. Imagine you're his sister, brother, wife, kid... it's appalling and heart-breaking.
Boycott evil. Employees, feel free to stop working for bad managers. Face management together as one, call them out, stop their production numbers cold in their tracks, and demand care and concern and employee safety and benefits. Demand HUMAN KINDNESS.
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 have been for a few months now.
www.resistandunsubscribe.com
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.
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.
Oh, and I'm in rural KS. Moved here from WA state
Cancel your Amazon subscription. Order direct. Shop locally. Understand you can do without a lot of crap you order. Even canceling a few months if you normally keep it all year is a start. They are going backwards to before labor laws. Soon they will stop paying altogether
I work for fedex for 18 years and you don't work at a company like that unless you want to work your butt off because that's what they expect. We were non-union and paid fairly.
After that I worked at the IRS for 12 years at this dreadful job where half the people just screwed around. Nobody cared. But several of the guys quit the IRS and went to work at Amazon and they love it but these are guys who knew how to work their butt off and didn't screw around at work.
So your response to a company’s disregard for an employees life & the impact to those who witnessed it is “work your butt off as expected!”
I’m confused as to how this applies.
Well I guess you missed my first comment that I made. The very first comment I made was yes they should have stopped work until an ambulance came home and picked up the employee and then maybe had a meeting about Safety in what happened.
I did miss it; don’t see it in feed, but thanks for sharing!
exactly what I was going to say. :) Its been inconvenient - but I refuse to give amazon a penny.
Yes. People don’t see that unions offer protection & for w management to see their employees as people.
This is why we need unions.
And the unions will take their money and do nothing.
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.
Do you know anything about labor history? The story of the union movement in America? I mean - have you done any research? Read a book? Your personal experience (probably informed by confirmation bias) is just anecdotal. 😊
Yes, I do. And unions served a purpose. They can also be corrupt and can make labor unaffordable. You might readupon the Teamsters to start
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.
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.
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.
We heard you the first six times already!
100% Where does the money from union dues actually go? While unions claim the money goes toward collective bargaining and protecting workers' rights, a significant portion is often used for union leader salaries, political contributions, overhead, and unrelated national campaigns. 2024 Tens of thousands of Michigan union members opted out of membership during the years the right-to-work law was in effect. This cost unions more than $50 million annually in lost dues.
In states with right-to-work laws, employees have the freedom to decline or resign from union membership, avoiding the obligation to pay dues. Conversely, in states without such laws, unions frequently include security clauses in their collective bargaining agreements, requiring the employees to join the union or provide financial support as a condition of employment. What’s more, union security clauses permit unions to force employers to discharge employees who refuse to do so. However, employees can become “Beck objectors,” paying only dues related to representational activities.
Screams freedom, less money to take home.
Exactly. Unfortunately, the best way to deal with a bad employer is to have the skills to find another job. And the best way to be able to find another job is to limit imigration and outsourcing. Everytime the labor market gets tight, they flood the market with workers.
Actually unions have achieved a great deal for workers across many work places.
And their leadership made a lot of money. There is corruption in unions ans some unions cost jobs to their members.
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.
If someone wanted to dive into pdx amazon’s…. No training, no safety and run by kids fresh out of college with zero life skills…. Give them a title, a walkie talkie, and they’re experts!
Until its time to be a grown up in adult situations
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.
It's an Amazon fulfillment warehouse, not a woodshop or mill. You absolutely can close a distribution warehouse for more than a day.
We remain confused why other local media has not picked up on this story. We operate from a mindset that all reporting on a topic is worth pursuing. The more reporters on this, the more informed the public will be. Thanks for reading and supporting us.
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.
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.
We appreciate you reading and supporting us!
Better yet, heavily fine and eliminate companies that lack compassion and show extremely poor judgment! Did the worker have survivor benefits for his family? Probably not. Today’s equivalent of legal slavery.
Y'all act like y'all (the majority) aren't the ones staffing these corporations.
Maintaining your own cages by continuing to work for them because y'all love being wage slaves.
Instead of enacting planetary rent abolishment….so you don't have to be wage slaves to the same corporations y'all choose to keep staffing 🤔
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.
This is great and important reporting.
We appreciate you reading and supporting us!
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.
It freaks me out that managers need “training” to know what to do. 1) help or find someone who can 1a) call 911 2) stop the line, escort employees out of the warehouse 3) wait for an ambulance 4) reconvene staff and speak together about what they witnessed 5) if you have production targets that must be reached that day ask who wants to work overtime and donate extra money to the man’s family
I’ve been a manager where an employee died. People attended the funeral on company time, we fundraised for his family and I covered one whole wall (it was huge) with butcher paper and people wrote messages to him, left flowers and drew pictures. I left it up for a month and every Friday we read the new messages. We eventually made a video featuring the wall and shared it with the family. I did not receive training to do any of this. I just am a human person.
That sounds like a wonderful thing you did, and I'm sure softened the blow of a tragedy. - Ryan
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.
If someone wanted to dive into pdx amazon’s…. No training, no safety and run by kids fresh out of college with zero life skills…. Give them a title, a walkie talkie, and they’re experts!
And the army peons who know that raising any concerns other than what snacks are in the vending machines will be met with intimidation and veiled threats
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.
Why have they only released a single recording if three people called 911? I’d also like to see OSHA’s full investigation released alongside an independent third party investigation. Really I want the workers to be represented but it looks like the cover up has already begun.
There were three 911 calls that we received with our records request. We chose to only release one because they others had names of employees in them, and we didn't want to publish that information without their consent. The tape we chose to publish offered relevant information while keeping the caller anonymous. In one of the other calls, the dispatcher is instructing the workers on how to used the defibrillator.
I have heard that cell phones aren't allowed on the warehouse floor. Someone would have had to go somewhere to call.
I’m glad you’re writing about, this abhorrent story!
Someone should sets this warehouse on fiyah.
So it's a Gulag ?
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?
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.
"People could die" from what? You keep acting like this warehouse makes things--it's distribution. They can absolutely stop forklifts and conveyor belts. Unless they are making life saving medicine/supplies, we can stop for a second. Sacrificing our humanity for progress should be avoided.
Hmmm…
Fascism FAKES empathy!! 💀
Amazon does not even pretend to have empathy. I will say that for them.
No more Amazon Prime. More consumers need to shop locally or go to the product maker's website to order.
For fuck sake, hasn't Amazon already demonstrated its true colors, treating employees like trash, before this horrific incident?
Imagine you're the mother of the human who died, watching how he was left there on the floor, only one person willing to try CPR to save him; the rest being told by shitty managers to ignore him and keep working. Imagine you're his sister, brother, wife, kid... it's appalling and heart-breaking.
Boycott evil. Employees, feel free to stop working for bad managers. Face management together as one, call them out, stop their production numbers cold in their tracks, and demand care and concern and employee safety and benefits. Demand HUMAN KINDNESS.