Supervisors told workers at an Amazon warehouse in Oregon to keep working as a co-worker lay dead on the floor. Top managers also failed to bring work to a halt. A worker was prevented from acting on normal human compassion and stepping in to help another person do chest compressions. Once EMS arrived, the facility’s management finally called a halt to work, promising pay for the rest of their shifts as workers were sent home. They were later told to return to work the next day as normal.
The death highlights Amazon’s famously dangerous work conditions. It also shows how these dangers result from the company’s relentless pursuit of bigger profits. The worker who collapsed and died was a “tote runner,” tasked with gathering stacks of plastic bins as tall as a person and hauling them around the building. The job is very physically demanding. This facility had recently made the job even harder by reducing the number of tote runners, shifting extra work onto those remaining. Co-workers also wondered whether excessive heat caused the man’s death. They believe that the recent installation of soundproof curtains in the building has reduced air flow and made the already bad heat worse. The next day, the AC appeared to be on, with the building noticeably cooler, showing that the dangerously high heat levels are a choice of management.
One worker told a reporter, “Between being told we should get back to work while a coworker is getting CPR and being told not to help, I just can’t support a corporation like that…We are just numbers.” It’s not just an Amazon problem, though. Intensifying work, refusing to make work conditions safe, denying workers the chance to help each other: these are the strategies that let huge corporations like Amazon squeeze ever-more profit out of us. They get richer while we get poorer, sicker, and angrier. In other words, this is capitalist business as usual.
