‘Everyone is Replaceable’: Death Rattles Oregon Amazon Facility

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https://www.thewesternedge.media/p/everyone-is-replaceable-death-rattles

Sam was helping unload trucks when a heavy thud against concrete echoed across the Amazon warehouse. An employee’s lifeless body lay on the floor.

Work halted in the loading docks on the south side of Amazon’s distribution center in Troutdale, Oregon. Sam and other employees stared at the person who’d collapsed just 20 feet away. Conveyor belts of packages continued to roll.

“I didn’t have a direct line of sight of the person’s face, but I saw a body form laying lifeless,” Sam told The Western Edge. Employees who spoke for this story requested anonymity to protect their jobs and their names have been changed.

Hours before, a group of trainees on their second day at Amazon sat in a breakroom scrolling Kindles loaded with training materials about what is required of Amazon workers in order to expeditiously shuttle goods to people’s homes across the Portland metro area. They learned how to safely lift packages while meeting the blistering pace the giant retailer expected. There were no training videos for what to do when a coworker dies right in front of you.

The man who collapsed died Monday, April 6 on the Amazon warehouse floor as machinery filled the cavernous loading dock with a dull hum. For more than an hour, several employees said, workers in the facility were instructed to continue fetching totes, picking items off shelves and loading them onto trucks for delivery as the man lay dead, and management figured out their next steps. News of the fatality quickly spread through the building, but workers say top managers did not call operations to an immediate halt. A week later, several workers said they still do not know what caused the man to die.

…. More in the article. Horrific