[Retric]

They don’t seem to be very concerned about injuries. One example that comes to mind is storing 40 lb bags of dog food such that people had to duck and lean over and drag them under a low shelf, that’s practically designed to cause back injuries and in fact caused multiple in a single warehouse.

[super256]

> They don’t seem to be very concerned about injuries. One example that comes to mind is storing 40 lb bags of dog food such that people had to duck and lean over and drag them under a low shelf, that’s practically designed to cause back injuries and in fact caused multiple in a single warehouse.

I used to work for Amazon a few years ago. I'm uncertain whether it was 12 pounds or 12 kg, but when a *tote weights more than this, you are supposed to handle the tote with two people.

*A tote is a small container of items, like this yellow one: https://media.wired.com/photos/593256d9aef9a462de9820d8/mast...

[saagarjha]

Are there 2 people generally available to do work like this?

[super256]

Yes. The workstations in our receiving and sorting lanes were right next to each other, and people can theoretically interrupt their current task within a few seconds.

The bigger issue is that no one is actually asking for help because of culture.

[dsfyu404ed]

Yeah but are they actually worse than the competition though? The whole industry is rife with that kind of crap (not like you're expect otherwise for a razor thin margin industry). I once worked somewhere they'd crib between the ground level pallets and first level racking so they could overload the racking (but my immediate manager was good and they put me on a forklift so I didn't care).

If anything the dehumanizing algorithmic tracking and optimization crap they do annoys me far more than the safety stuff.

[Retric]

Actual comparison of injury rates show yes they are much worse than the industry average.

Amazon’s extreme turnover rate is also significant. Someone that’s been doing a job for longer has both the skill and physical capacity to avid injury doing the same tasks as a new employee. This compounds over long shifts as people get tired, so limiting new employees to 8 vs 12 hour shifts would make a real difference among other options.

[GoldenMonkey]

Workplace safety is 3x worse than the industry norm. And they recently got fined by OSHA, across 3 different states. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amazon-osha-fines_n_63c84509e...