Key excerpts from a much clearer article. And yet again, why you never 100% believe a company's PR response when they're trying to cover themselves. They tell just enough truth, but use it to intentionally mislead.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon-strik...
> According to the company’s previous statements, the infected co-worker in question last reported for work on 11 March. Had Smalls been exposed that day, a 14-day mandatory quarantine would have made him eligible to return as soon as 25 March.
> Smalls said Amazon did not send him home until 28 March, three weeks after the exposure.
> “No one else was put on quarantine,” he said, even as the infected person worked alongside “associates for 10-plus hours a week”.
> “You put me on quarantine for coming into contact with somebody, but I was around [that person] for less than five minutes,” he told Vice.
> According to Amazon, no one else was fired. Smalls said he was considering legal action, calling it “a no-brainer”.
From this distance, while we may all have our respective sympathies, both stories are plausible and we don't really know. It is abundantly obvious that companies generally find reasons (legitimate or otherwise) to fire those advocating for a union, but it isn't exactly unheard of for an employee knowing they are facing termination or disciplinary action for legitimate reasons to cover that over with some socially-acceptable reason like various claims of discrimination or starting a union like this, etc. It's not a secret hack nobody's ever heard of.
Edit: See boiled cabbage's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059 More data can bring more clarity.
Multiple employees have spoken out about the working conditions at Amazon's warehouse facilities over the last couple of weeks. Common complaints include a lack of protective equipment, sanitization, health monitoring, and working "shoulder to shoulder". Workers are getting sick, and Amazon isn't properly reporting the actual cases of COVID-19 at their facilities.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/amazon-warehouse-employees-g...
Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/whole-foods-amazon...
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/whole-foods-workers-to-strike-...
Mr. Smalls announced ahead of time that he was going to lead a general strike at his facility in solidarity with the instacart and wholefoods strike on the same day. This was reported in the media. Amazon knew this was being organized and waited to fire the worker until after the planned protest strike occurred.
Source: https://apnews.com/cf27e9bec86d846447aad7e632484bea
Here is Mr. Smalls talking about this in detail: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/30/staten-island-whole-fo... - All he was asking for was for the building to be sanitized after a confirmed case of COVID-19 occurred at his facility, at Staten Island near the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States in New York.
The attorney general of New York recognized this issue for what it is.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James said late Monday evening that "it is disgraceful that Amazon would terminate an employee who bravely stood up to protect himself and his colleagues."
"At the height of a global pandemic, Chris Smalls and his colleagues publicly protested the lack of precautions that Amazon was taking to protect them from COVID-19," she said. "Today, Chris Smalls was fired. In New York, the right to organize is codified into law, and any retaliatory action by management related thereto is strictly prohibited."
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/tech/amazon-worker-fired-stat...
---
Here is another article discussing the actual conditions of Mr. Smalls Facility:
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Despite Amazon’s efforts, Amazon employees at multiple facilities who spoke to CNBC argue that the measures aren’t enough to keep them safe. They say uneven safety precautions at facilities across the country have sown feelings of distrust between workers and their managers. Workers say they’ve become worried that managers aren’t being honest about whether employees are sick with the virus, so that they can keep the facilities open.
At some facilities, workers say essential supplies like hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes are rationed or there’s none available, putting them at risk of catching the virus. Warehouse workers say they’re forced to choose between going to work and risking their health or staying home and not being able to pay their bills.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/amazon-fires-staten-island-c...
---
Amazon is in the wrong here. They retaliated against Mr. Smalls. This was a labor movement action, and they illegally fired Mr. Smalls for organizing at this facility.
These workers aren't asking for more money. They are asking for safe and sanitary working conditions. Are they not entitled to a healthy working environment?
Edit: Formatting issues. This was a copy-paste from a comment I made on a /r/business thread on reddit. Formatting on HN is a bit different. :)
> key point Amazon claims he was exposed to the worker on March 11th
Did they claim that? I'm looking for a source on this. "According to the company’s previous statements, the infected co-worker in question last reported for work on 11 March", but when you look at their linked source[1] it says: "Amazon confirmed an associate, who reported for work on 11 March, has since been diagnosed with Covid-19".
> “No one else was put on quarantine,” he said
Is this confirmed? You can't just assume this to be true. Pretty damning if so, though.
> “You put me on quarantine for coming into contact with somebody, but I was around [that person] for less than five minutes,” he told Vice.
Viral transmission has no minimum timeline and often occurs at first point of contact (e.g., handshake) or cough/sneeze at any time. Kind of irresponsible to even print that quote without correcting the argument.
It may be that Amazon retaliated, but stuff like this doesn't prove it. We need the hard facts. At this point it's unclear and sounds fishy on both sides.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/30/amazon-wo...
Instead of giving them safety gear, they've fired the lead organizer.
They only reason they have any of the rights and conditions you described in the first place is because of organization and agitation, not their generosity.
The end result of letting authoritarian capitalism into the global marketplace can be seen in the conditions of Amazon warehouses in the United States. I'm certainly not the only person to say this, their own employees do as well. Hint - that's why they're organizing.[1]
BUT - more to the point - why post this? Are you an Amazon employee as well? If not - why? I just can't fathom in a situation like this why you'd feel the need to list - from memory? - all of the employee benefits that Amazon provides to its warehouse workers.
[1] https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/amazon-warehouses-are-cult-lik...
Source: https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/10/can-you-be-fi...
However, there are reports of cases with an incubation period of up to 27 days.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incuba...
Visible symptoms aren't the only concern, you can be contagious without symptoms, and there are studies showing that 50% of all infections could be asymptomatic - https://eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.20...
1: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-per-capita
> The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.
24 hours is within the time-frame of same-day deliveries at the least. I think OP's point still stands; it's a disease vector.
I think unions do good, but they can also be an enemy of progress. Here is a piece about unions that I found on google.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/unneces...
(USGDPPC - EU28GDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EU28GDPPC) = 0.338
So the comment you're replying to was correct, for at least one plausible definition of "1/3 lower than the US".
As for the countries you mentioned:
Monaco: < 1 square mile, not reproducible in a larger country
Norway: Giant oil reserves / tiny population, not reproducible without that
Switzerland: Valid
Ireland: GDP numbers shouldn't be taken at face value because tax laws[2] encourage corporations to attribute EU-wide revenues to Ireland. Reported GDP per capita is 135% of the US value, but 2016 median household income[3] was only 87% of the US value[4]. This cuts both ways, though - other EU countries should have their estimates nudged upwards.
Iceland: 92% of US GDP per capita[1]
Denmark: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Sweden: 86% of US GDP per capita[1]
Austria: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Finland: 79% of US GDP per capita[1]
UK: 75% of US GDP per capita[1]
France: 74% of US GDP per capita[1]
Italy: 68% of US GDP per capita[1]
Spain: 65% of US GDP per capita[1]
EU (all 28 countries): 71% of US GDP per capita[1]
[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
[3] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-gpii/geog...
[4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
It's not necessarily either. It may very well simply be the preponderance of the evidence. Nevertheless, such a suit will be undertaken with the benefit of the discovery process.
(USGDPPC - EurozoneGDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EurozoneGDPPC) = 0.283
Roughly speaking, you could write this as "The GDP per capita of the Eurozone is 28.3% lower than the US".
That’s how we came to have employer-provided healthcare:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-th...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/emphasize-...
I lived in Germany for a couple years and now live in one of the poor(er) states. A comment above this says to jettisoning Idaho will game GDP numbers for the US. I'm currently experiencing earthquake aftershocks AND low GDP.
I honestly think for most people, Germany had a high quality of living (if you ignore AC when it's 35 degrees in summer). But in the US, we've got Mammon and, for better or worse, GDP is how we track that.
The abuses you're worried about are real in principle. The problem is, internet users are a thousand (nay, a million) times too quick to become aggressive about them, which ends up causing a lot more harm than the things they're fighting.
In particular, (1) most people are posting in good faith, even if they happen to be defending their employers; and (2) most internet comments about astroturfing have no foundation. On that last point: if you saw as much data on this as we do, you'd be shocked at how made up and imaginary they are; having studied this closely for years, I can tell you that it's nearly 100% projection. In both of these cases, the putative cures causes more harm than the putative diseases.
The point about not attacking people because of their employers is particularly important. HN has members working for lots of different employers, and one's work tends to be the thing one knows the most about. The last thing we want on this site is a climate of hostility to disincentivize people from posting to threads where they might know something. I'm not talking about this thread (which I haven't read), I'm saying that in general, it's a super bad tradeoff to tolerate this sort of soft-doxxing on HN, so we don't.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Oh and by the way: HN has reams of anti-Amazon discussion and pro-union discussion. Indeed the top comment on the current thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059) is a counterexample to what you're saying, and meanwhile the comment you were complaining about was highly downvoted. Such perceptions of HN being biased against one's view are notoriously unreliable; the people who hold opposite views see the community as biased in just the opposite way, and are just as sure about it. You (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) can't trust your ad hoc observations about this, because your pre-existing opinions condition what you notice and how strongly you weight it. It is a well-known cognitive bias, a flaw that we all suffer from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
There is nothing magic about unions or democracy which means that they guarantee good outcomes. You have to work at it and be involved. In fact everyone has to.
The Taft-Hartley Act has been around for a long, long time. Among other things, it gives the President power to order workers in an essential industry back on the job if they strike.
I wasn't able to quickly find the current total number of times it's been invoked, but here's a WaPo article about Jimmy Carter using it in 1978. Even at that date, it had been used 34 times.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/07/p...
I learned about this stuff in history class. Did you not? If not, perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
And maybe you should ask yourself what exactly you're accomplishing by downmodding factual, noninflammatory comments just because you don't like the facts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/02/amazon-...