Amazon’s warehouse operations have long struggled with high rates of injury. A 2024 investigation led by Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions member Bernie Sanders accused the company of pushing for higher productivity at the cost of employee safety, in conclusions Amazon vehemently denied at the time.
But even in the case of a worker’s death, managers are being instructed to tell employees to look away. At least,that’s according to a startling new investigation by the Western Edge, which found that Amazon tried to keep the April 6 death of a worker at its distribution center in Troutdale, Oregon, from being publicized. The outlet is the first to report on the death one week later.
Worse yet, an employee, who was given the pseudonym Sam, told the outlet that despite seeing a “body form laying lifeless,” his supervisor told them to “please get back to work.”
A woman reportedly ran over to the individual in distress and began performing chest compressions on him. Sam, who is trained in CPR, suggested they should help her.
“I start sobbing and said, ‘I want to help, please!’ I know she’s going to get tired and need to be subbed out,” they told The Western Edge.
“It has to be management or safety team,” his supervisor replied. “Just turn around and not look. Let’s get back to work,” Sam recalled his boss telling him. According to the shaken worker, even his supervisor had tears in their eyes.
While first responders eventually showed up to the man who had collapsed, the incident shocked employees, with some calling out middle management for being too callous in their response.
The news comes just days after a man lit a 1.2-million-square-foot warehouse filled to the brim with toilet paper and other highly flammable paper products on fire. Footage shows him lighting tall stacks of paper on fire while seething that “all you had to do was pay us enough to live.”
Amazon has previously fought off accusations of being responsible for a series of deaths at its distribution centers across the country, lawsuits involving the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that have overwhelmingly landed in Amazon’s favor.
Beyond callous supervisors, workers at the Troutdale facility told the Western Edge that sound dampening material allegedly installed to keep noise out of nearby offices had blocked airflow, causing temperatures to climb. In 2019, the Portland Mercury called it a “notoriously dangerous” warehouse.
The man who died at the warehouse was a “tote runner,” meaning his job was to move large yellow plastic bins to a cart, a physically-demanding activity. A cause of death has yet to be identified.
Supervisors reportedly kept the information that somebody had died from other employees for several hours from many workers, sending staff home at the end of their 3:45 pm break. That means workers, including ones who knew about the death, had to keep working for several hours following the incident.
“Truthfully, I now have even less respect for our leadership team than I did before, which I didn’t know was possible,” one worker pseudonymously identified as RJ told the Western Edge. “It makes me feel more ashamed to work there knowing that people can drop dead and we have to carry on knowing it doesn’t matter to the higher ups, and everyone is replaceable.”
Supervisors did respond to messages on a employee app called My Voice, offering shaken workers counseling services and unpaid leave. However, Sam noticed they weren’t paid for a full shift after being sent home early.
Amazon did not respond to Western Edge‘s request for comment.
The reporting paints a damning picture of the conditions inside Amazon’s distribution warehouses. Worse yet, The New York Times reported in October that the company is looking to replace more than 600,000 jobs with robots, efforts that have met significant headwinds.
Meanwhile, employees are being pushed to their limits in what critics continue to argue is an unsafe work environment.
“Between being told we should get back to work while a coworker is getting CPR and being told not to help, I just can’t support a corporation like that,” Sam told the Western Edge. “We are just numbers.”
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