Samuel Messidor
Amazon has been fined a paltry $7,000 after 20-year old Caes Gruesbeck died on May 8 of this year while clearing a jam in an overhead conveyor belt in an Indiana logistics facility.
Clearing jammed conveyor belts is a dangerous but routine operation in logistics hubs, where high volumes of packages and fast work tempos meet lax safety regulations.
Indiana is one 22 states that allow companies to investigate safety violations and issue fines with their own regulatory boards, rather than requiring them to go through OSHA. The maximum fine for a single violation is $7,000, and the state does not allow individuals to sue for wrongful workplace injury or death.
OSHA’s powers are limited even in states where the administration is in charge of investigation and regulation. A former head of OSHA said to monopoly media that their fines are “ridiculously low—even for fatalities where the company violated the law.” OSHA estimates that it would take its organization 160 years to inspect every workplace in the United States.
Amazon workers have long complained of management’s cover-ups of workplace deaths and orders for workers to continue laboring, even working around the bodies of fallen coworkers. A University of Chicago study found this year that 41% of Amazon employees have been injured on the job, and the rate of serious injury at Amazon facilities is twice that of other warehouses in the US.
The bourgeoisie hold organizational control over their operations, especially in situations with no unions to struggle for workers’ rights. Their constant drive for increased profit results in dangerous tempo increases, lax safety regulations, and under-staffing. All this adds up to workers bleeding—and dying—for the profits of the ruling class.
photo: Amazon warehouse in New Jersey, showing the overhead conveyors on which Gruesbeck died. Edwin J. Torres/ NJ Governor’s Office.
