Amazon threatened driver’s job for leaving route during tornado
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Where I'm from I only ever remember them being issued when seen by an actual person, where I am now it's mostly if radar is showing it, it seems.
/s
I don't live in a tornado area, but I had always assumed tornado warnings functioned similarly to other storm warnings -- a "watch" indicates elevated activity and likelihood of a severe weather event, while a "warning" indicates danger is likely and you should take appropriate action immediately to avoid danger.
I grew up in a tornado prone area, and during a warning we were taught to shelter in the basement since it means there's a tornado somewhere in the area.
This depends on what you mean by "a pure market solution", as most workplace safety laws were put in place to make things more predictable for employers, rather than helping employees. The 'old system' in most places involved one-off lawsuits with somewhat unpredictable outcomes.
And you know what? It's totally fine. I absolutely don't want my people in the building until it's deemed safe. I can't really imagine another stance.
Amazon is so big that it's employees really are just cogs in a machine. They really couldn't care less about these drivers.
Virutally no jobs on the planet are worth such a direct risk. Especially when you can just wait it out. It's highly likely there is absolutely no pressure to have those delivered soon besides "we want them soon."
Amazon, not uniquely, has a business model based around devolving blame and recourse in a way that insulates them from the normal downside risk a business would have. I don't know if this is a consequence of how risk averse the world has become, but I believe it's a source of competitive advantage.
You call amazon about a problem, the only feedback they ask for is about the call center agent, who almost certainly has the least agency or autonomy of anyone in the process but is subject to all the blame. Uber is the same, any problem you have or recourse you want is directed at the driver or restaurant, when both are basically cogs in a machine. But it could never be the company's fault.
Here it's the same thing. It was the "delivery service partner" that was the problem. I'd believe that legally this could be true, but the root cause is still amazon offloading responsibility for any downside onto the "delivery service partner".
I don't know what the answer is, but I think there is some gaming of the system going on where these companies have found a way to offload risk that is not really fair.
One potential answer is to make gig workers employees.
For this example:
1. Gov says no more 1099 workers -> consequence is every single contractor loses their job (thankfully those whose contracts were killed would be due just compensation under the 5th ammendment).
2. Gig worker now must get rehired as a w2 worker or they need to find a new job.
3. They get paid less if they take their old job back because now their employer needs to provide them the equipment to do their job, plus any benefits required by law, plus minimum wage.
3b. They get their job back at the same wage but consumers now have to pay more for all the reasons in [3]. Or they no longer can find work because they don't provide enough value at the adjusted wage rate to justify it, in the event consumer demand falls at the new price levels.
Let's say all the above happens, and they still have their job.
Next week another tornado comes and they have to swerve off course again, same conditions, to not die. Their employer can still fire them without a second thought as either party may end the working relationship at any time for any reason!
So you've done nothing except make more, useless, legislation.
*Note: I just read the article and saw nothing about this being a situation derived from the worker being 1099 or in the "gig" economy. However, this response is with respect to the comment specifically targeting "gig" workers.
Gig workers are misslabelled as contractors. They are not. It's a perversion of the idea.
All your arguments can be sued against minimum wage as well, but minimum wage increase have shown positive effects every time. Your arguments can also be used to justify slavery.
Where do you think this society is headed? A bunch of gig workers scrapping the bottle of the barrel, with no insurances, no job safety, bad working conditions, but doing all the jobs servicing us fat middle class programmers, who think these people can't earn more because then we would have to pay a shopping fee on Amazon?
You and I work to afford a house and a vacation. Others work to afford basic survival. And we deny them improved working conditions because of why?
And gig working is only one part of the problem. Abuse if sub-contracting achieves the same, and missing worker protection laws even allow companies to mistreat their actual employees.
There is no need for this economic brutality. There is enough for everyone, the super rich can even stay super rich once we improve the situation of the people on the other end of the scale.
Yeah, Amazon is powerful enough to set its own rules, and by those rules it's never at fault.
Maybe the solution is to beef up some kind of small-claims-court like process, and have some actually-independent arbiter take a look at the facts.
It is a consequence of bad laws and lack of labor law enforcement. It is par for the course to hire a “manager”, give them no ability to modify a budget, pay them a meager $40k salary so that they qualify as an “exempt employee” so you do not have to pay them overtime, and then give them impossible metrics to meet.
Voila, you now have a fall guy, and can save on labor costs because they are willing to work 60 to 80 hour weeks at no extra cost in exchange for a steady paycheck. And they will do questionable things, like the linked Amazon example, without the employer needing to put it in writing giving the employer plausible deniability.
I even know many immigrants that were lucky enough to immigrate to the US a few decades earlier do this to their own relatives who chain immigrate after them.
Very simple fix - make the minimum exempt employee salary $200k or even more per year.
If it's Amazon's rule that the worker be fired if they evacuate from a tornado without authorization, then they need to take the blame here.
The article specifically says that the order to remain in place came from Amazon.
So I started ordering the cheapest things that get Prime free delivery, one at a time, multiple times per week. I usually order something like a 2-pack of pens or pencils But every few days I get things that are cheap and bulky, like charcoal and what not, or cheap and heavy, like various dumbbell weights. I use some stuff, but either give away or return a lot it, usually preferring to return pricier and bulkier stuff.
Other than some concerned-sounding emails I haven't faced any consequences after about 6 months of this. I'm curious what Amazon will do, if anything. I imagine it doesn't take long to fritter away the $12 a month plus the cost of things I don't return, once the fulfillment, packaging, shipping and such are added up, multiple times per week.
Even odds as to whether it’s named Scrooge or BezOS.
Not sure how the Amazon big trucks operate in this regard but they do seem on the sketchy side since they don’t pay a whole lot so are scraping the bottom of the barrel to get their freight moved…or so I’ve heard, haven’t actually talked with one of their drivers.