Linda Neal, a 58-year-old warehouse employee of XPO, a world logistics giant, had a heart attack and fell heavily to the ground.
Her warehouse is an iron building, and since 20 14 was acquired by XPO, no air conditioner has been installed, and the indoor temperature in summer is often close to 40℃, making it difficult for employees inside to breathe. 20 17 from June to September, at least one employee fainted in the warehouse every week because of the heat. One of Neil's colleagues, Laksha Ross Sebert Nulsen, said in an interview with local media: "I have personally experienced what it is like to put a chicken in the stove."
10 On the last day of Neil's life, she came to work in this warehouse as usual. She had a heart attack before and complained to her son that XPO's foreman wouldn't let her leave work early when she didn't feel well. On the day of 17, she felt difficult to breathe and asked her superior for a rest, but she was refused. A few minutes later, she died of a heart attack.
Her colleagues gathered around her body in horror. However, the warehouse manager actually ordered other employees to continue working next to her body. Four employees who worked in the warehouse that day were interviewed by The New York Times, and the dynamics of the incident posted by some employees on social media such as Facebook can also prove it. However, XPO's spokesman denied it, saying that the company let employees leave work early on the day of Neil's death, and claimed that the above employees were "shamelessly using their deceased colleagues" to fight for their own interests.
XPO employees protested/networked outside the warehouse.
Storage industry is more dangerous than coal mine.
The death of Linda Neil and a series of subsequent events have made the real working conditions of employees in the express delivery and warehousing industries in the United States surface. They are the backbone behind well-known services such as Amazon and other head e-commerce "Next Day" and "Prime Day Member Day". Since the beginning of this century, almost all the 444,000 jobs lost in the traditional retail industry in the United States have been absorbed by the emerging express warehousing industry.
However, behind the unprecedented prosperity of e-commerce, these warehouse workers and express sorters are working under extremely harsh conditions. Amazon calls its distribution warehouse and operation center fulfillment center, which literally means "Achievement Center". However, the ordinary warehouse workers who work here, I am afraid, have no sense of accomplishment. According to the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industrial injury rate in the warehousing industry has even surpassed the recognized high-risk industries such as coal mine, construction and logging.
The industrial injury rate of storage industry in the United States exceeds that of high-risk industries such as coal mines/US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Why is the express warehousing industry so dangerous? The key is that this industry is currently in an embarrassing transition period. With the popularization of automation, a considerable number of warehouse employees will soon be replaced by machines. From warehouses directly operated by head e-commerce companies such as Amazon to many small warehousing companies subcontracted at different levels, employees are often the standard requirements of machines, and the work intensity is amazing. Today's American warehousing industry can be said to be a "preview" of the future automation era. The only difference is that today, like machines, people who work in warehouses almost all the time are real people.
Amazon is the leader of American e-commerce and often leads the trend of e-commerce industry. For example, from April 26 this year, Amazon announced the provision of "Next Day Arrival" service. Less than a month later, Wal-Mart caught up and launched the next day. As the services provided by e-commerce become more and more intimate, the work intensity of warehouse workers will also increase.
Amazon warehouse staff/network
As early as 20 14, the documentary "The Rise of Amazon" of American Consumer News and Business Channel reported the daily work of Amazon express sorters. During their working hours of 10 hour every day, they often have to walk more than 25 kilometers, and on average, they have to sort more than 200 packages in warehouses the size of two or three football fields every hour. This year, the number has doubled, and Amazon sorters in new york now have to sort more than 400 packages every hour, one every seven seconds on average.
In the warehouse center, hand-held scanners always assign tasks to employees, and the time of each task is accurate to the second. If employees can't arrive at the designated location of the warehouse within the specified time, they will be deducted. If more points are deducted, employees will be interviewed by management and even fired.
This kind of work intensity, even for employees in their prime, can't stand it sometimes. Stephen Abidy, who was just in his early twenties, used to work in Amazon warehouse. Like many others, he was finally fired because he couldn't keep up with the progress. He once described his work to the American Consumer News and Business Channel: "After you picked up one thing in Channel 54, you were suddenly assigned to get another thing in Channel 72, but the system only gave you ten seconds. I go home from work every day and sit on the sofa. My body is completely exhausted and I feel like a dead person. "
The hand-held scanning gun of Amazon warehouse staff will make the task accurate to seconds/US Consumer News and Business Channel.
No time to go to the toilet, use bottles and trash cans to solve it.
Such a tight schedule means that warehouse employees often have no time to solve the most basic physiological needs such as going to the toilet. Although Amazon officially claims that warehouse employees can "go to the toilet at any time", a large number of employees' self-reports and reports from many media have shown the opposite picture.
Earlier this year, a reporter from Time magazine went to work in an Amazon storage center in Indiana, USA. There, he found that an employee has nearly 12 hours of working time every day, except for 30 minutes of unpaid lunch break, there is only 18 minutes of extra rest time. Going to the toilet, taking a sip of water, or even walking a little slower than the algorithm, are all counted in 18 minutes of "rest time". Amazon monitors employees' position, speed and work efficiency in real time through their hand-held scanning guns. At the beginning of last year, Amazon even applied for a watch patent to monitor the hand activities of warehouse employees in real time in the future.
FedEx's courier brother/network
In this way, for many employees, going to the toilet has become an unimaginable luxury. To make matters worse, sometimes employees are far away from the toilet in the warehouse. If they want to go to the toilet, they must walk a football field or two first, and then walk back. Bad luck, I have to wait in line to go to the bathroom. One person may be exhausted after going back and forth, even exceeding the upper limit of rest time, and the trouble will be big. The system will automatically notify the management of the warehouse center.
As a result, employees can only solve problems in various desperate ways. When James Bradworth, a British journalist, was working in a warehouse in Amazon, England, he found some employees urinating in bottles or trash cans in the warehouse in order not to be penalized or talked about. Employees who can't solve this problem are not so lucky. In the past few years, pregnant Amazon warehouse employees filed seven lawsuits, claiming that Amazon refused to allow them to go to the toilet more frequently and reduce the time of continuous walking. Earlier this year, an employee who suffered from Crohn's disease and needed to go to the toilet frequently also sued Amazon. He revealed to Amazon that he had this disease when he joined the company, but he was eventually fired because he went to the toilet and had too much rest.
Busy Amazon Warehouse Center/vision china, New Jersey, USA
Under the heavy pressure, warehouse employees suffer from frequent physical and mental diseases.
Under such working conditions, employees are injured from time to time. Back pain, muscle strain and other common injuries are common, and sometimes employees will faint on the spot when working in the warehouse. This is why Amazon has been accused in recent years of letting employees "work like robots". While demanding human employees with the strength of robots, Amazon also implements automation in storage centers, and more and more robots and automation equipment work with humans in storage centers. The injury of warehouse employees not only comes from the general working intensity of robots, but also comes from the robots beside them.