Amazon Worker Correspondent
I am an Amazon worker. I’ve been employed by this company for a decade and during my time working here I’ve seen too many of my fellow workers die while on the clock.
Within the first year of opening, SMF1 had our first passing. A worker threw up and soaked an entire table in their blood. They passed away and the company did nothing to tell the workers what happened to them. I don’t even know what they looked like.
Amazon does this far too often. Recently in the news we heard about a worker passing in Oregon and the mangers forcing workers to continue their labor. No respect for the dead. Unknown to me they did this in Sacramento years before what had happened in Oregon. A worker in pack had passed out and managers used cardboard to cover them, telling everyone else to get back to work. That worker later died. And I didn’t find out about this until 3 years after they passed.
I myself have witnessed a driver pass away in his vehicle. I can’t describe how upsetting it is to find and carry the lifeless body of a third party driver my age and wait for the paramedics to show up and pray to God that he’ll be okay only to find out then and there that he’s dead. I had to start medication because of how traumatic that moment was. If I’m going to be honest, if it wasn’t for this company being so automated, I’m willing to bet he would still be alive. That automated system we have made him park far and away from the designated parking area.
I can’t imagine the amount of lives lost because of this company’s negligence. They don’t care about workers’ lives. They take no responsibility for the workers that pass and more often than not, do not accommodate workers who desperately need it. The lives lost that are not reported shows how indifferent this company is to its workers.
Image: An Amazon fulfillment center in Troutdale, OR. Credit: Tedder on Wikimedia Commons.
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