Author 丨 Wang Fan
Produced by | Prism Tencent News Xiaoman Studio
Two weeks before Christmas, the mother of Clayton Lynn Cope, a 29-year-old maintenance worker, never saw her child again: "He was just going to work, and wherever he thought, he would never be able to return home." ”
On the night of December 10, 2021, multiple tornadoes swept through five major U.S. provinces, including Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. In extreme weather, several buildings were destroyed. Clayton works at the Amazon warehouse, about 25 miles east of St. Louis, Illinois. Local police officers said in their briefing that the distribution center was torn across the area when the concrete walls, about 12 meters high and 0.3 meters thick, collapsed inward and the roof was overturned.
An Amazon spokesperson said that at that time, the staff in the warehouse were concentrated in situ to avoid the disaster, but one of the shelters was destroyed by a tornado. Clayton Kopp is currently one of six people identified by police as having lost their lives in the collapse. His mother said in an interview with foreign media that she was on the phone with her son before the warehouse was attacked, urging him to find a place to shelter from the disaster. In the early hours of the next day, about 8 hours after the tornado hit, she learned of her son's death.
Amazon's local rescue team released a list of 6 people killed at Amazon's warehouse, ranging in age from 26 to 62, and said search and rescue efforts were continuing.
As more survivors began to speak up, the "ban on mobile phones" in Amazon's warehouses was questioned. Surviving employees complained that because the company was not allowed to carry mobile phones in the warehouse, it was unable to obtain timely extreme weather warnings and contact their families. Behind the doubts, highlighting the distrust of blue-collar workers in the United States on whether enterprises put efficiency and profit above the safety of employees, and the doubts of American workers about whether they can get rid of the "system" control, it also puts forward higher requirements for large enterprises in the emergency response mechanism of extreme weather.
Maxer Technology announced a top view of the partial collapse of Amazon's warehouse
"Why were there workers in the building when the tornado struck?"
One of the survivors, Harris, 44, has been working as a truck driver in Amazon's collapsed warehouse since September. He recalled that when he returned to the warehouse on Friday night after completing all the delivery tasks, his mobile phone began to sound the alarm. After he drove the car into the warehouse, a colleague ran to the driver and shouted, quickly got out of the car to avoid the disaster.
Soon after Shelter in place, Harris recalled, there was a loud roar and warehouses began to shake.
"There were debris everywhere, people started screaming and the lights went out." Harris likened it to the feeling of an earthquake, "It's terrible." ”
Amazon said that when a site learns of the existence of an extreme weather warning in the area, it typically notifies and instructs all employees to move to designated and marked in-place shelters, also gives emergency response guidance in new employee training, and exercises throughout the year.
But American netizens are questioning, "Why are there workers left in the warehouse when the tornado hits?" and a heated debate unfolded on social media. Opponents argue that tornadoes in the central U.S. could reach thousands of times a year, and that weather warnings are inaccurate. If companies are shut down for early warnings, normal economic activity will be interrupted and may require a month of downtime throughout the year. But proponents argue that perhaps not all extreme weather requires downtime, but companies at least need to provide safe shelter in place and give employees the autonomy to choose when to evacuate.
However, Amazon's warehouse "ban on mobile phones" has interfered with employees' independent choice of when to evacuate to a certain extent, and has been pushed to the cusp of the storm.
The business and security choices behind the "ban on mobile phones"
Enki Research shows tornadoes that swept through five major provinces in the central United States, nearly 40 tornadoes, of which the yellow color block is a rainstorm warning, and the red color block is a flood warning
The warehouse "prohibited from bringing in mobile phones" is not Amazon alone.
A domestic logistics-related staff once told the author that the warehouse prohibits workers from bringing in mobile phones with multiple considerations, in addition to the fear that mobile phones will cause workers to be distracted, easy to cause production accidents, but also worried that workers will take pictures of the internal layout of the warehouse and data privacy, leaking trade secrets.
Amazon staff have also replied on the Internet that not all offices of Amazon prohibit mobile phones or Bluetooth headsets, such as Prime Now centers and some sorting centers are allowed to carry mobile phones. He also said that the general warehouse ban on mobile phones is also worried about interfering with the instruments in the warehouse, which will also endanger the safety of workers.
However, when extreme weather strikes and the escape time window is extremely short, the drawbacks of banning mobile phones appear. It is reported that the local weather warning in Illinois occurred about 30 minutes before the actual arrival of the tornado, but some survivors of Amazon warehouses mentioned that they left their mobile phones in lockers or vehicles to prevent them from receiving extreme weather warnings, and they were also worried that once they were trapped, they could not contact their families or the outside world.
"After this death, there was absolutely no way I could rely on Amazon to keep me safe." An Amazon worker in Illinois said in an interview with the media, "If they continue to ban the use of mobile phones, I will resign." ”
But another worker said she was not completely without options and would apply for leave whenever the company decided to remain open under extreme weather warnings.
"Frankly, I don't believe in the security that businesses offer." The worker said, "If there is bad weather, I still want to make my own decisions for safety." Practitioners familiar with the construction of U.S. factories have told the authors that factories often have in-situ shelters and reinforced with steel bars and thicker concrete, but accidents still occur from time to time. In 2018, an Amazon sorting center in Baltimore, USA, also partially collapsed after a hurricane. At that time, under strong winds, the 15-meter-high wall collapsed, and two workers were unfortunately killed.
Questions about whether to carry a cell phone underscore the mistrust between blue-collar workers and business owners in the United States. Some workers believe that the main reason why business owners are not allowed to carry mobile phones is because of the protection of productivity and efficiency, so they are worried that their safety is not as important as the company's performance. They argue that unlike white-collar workers, blue-collar workers tend to charge by the hour, so business owners value productivity per unit of time.
Another U.S. labor lawyer told the author that unless a company executive, the U.S. mostly follows the principle of "at will employment," in which an employer can fire an employee for any lawful or no reason at any time, and an employee can resign at any time for any reason or no reason. Therefore, if the business owner clearly stipulates whether he can carry a mobile phone in the employee's internal code, it is difficult for the employee to sue the business owner for this provision even if he or she has objections.
Bezos, the world's richest man, was questioned
The day after the warehouse collapsed, Bezos publicly stated on social media that "everyone should know that the Amazon team is committed to supporting them and will accompany them in this crisis." We would like to express our most heartfelt thanks to the first responders who have worked tirelessly in the field. ”
After the death of the warehouse collapse, Amazon founder Bezos became the target of public criticism.
Although he stepped down as CEO in July to be replaced by and former cloud computing head Andy Jassy, he is still seen as the de facto owner of Amazon. Bezos, who holds more than 10 percent of the shares, is Amazon's largest shareholder, and the 61,000 shares of common stock granted by new CEO Andy Jassy under the executive incentive system will be issued over 10 years, and his current stake in Amazon is only 0.02%.
In an internal letter stepping down as CEO, Bezos wrote, "Becoming ceo of Amazon is a profound responsibility that is time-consuming and laborious. When taking on such responsibilities, it is difficult to put other energies into other things. As Executive Chairman, I will continue to be involved in important Amazon initiatives. After the warehouse collapsed, Bezos was questioned whether employee safety was considered one of the "important Amazon programs."
The day after the warehouse collapsed, Bezos was updating social media with news of the launch of the commercial space company Blue Origin. Blue Origin is a new venture that Bezos threw himself into after stepping down as CEO of Amazon. On July 20, 2021, at the age of 57, he boarded the new Shepard, which originated from blue, and personally conducted the rocket's first manned spaceflight test, achieving the first unmanned all-civilian spaceflight in history. But as he celebrates his new personal milestone, skeptics argue that he is simply joining a new game of top billionaires, escaping to solve real-world puzzles.
While Bezos posted condolences to the victims of the warehouse collapse, some netizens in the comment area publicly ridiculed, "While you are celebrating the launch of the commercial space company Blue Origin, rescuers in the warehouse are exhuming corpses in the rubble." ”
Bezos was questioned by netizens about whether he neglected the rescue deployment because he posted photos of Blue Origin the day after the warehouse collapsed.
In the field of public opinion, the safety and treatment of workers is more likely to attract the attention of ordinary people than commercial space breakthroughs, and the collapse event also masks the success of new launches in commercial space. The background to the broader questioning of Bezos' negligence about the safety and treatment of employees is the huge gap between the soaring wealth of business owners during the epidemic and the possibility of poverty and illness for frontline workers. In 2020, Amazon's total market capitalization reached the trillion-dollar mark, and Bezos's personal wealth rose more than a hundredfold, becoming the world's first top richest man with a personal wealth of more than $200 billion. But on the other hand, due to poor protection, between March and September 2020, 19,000 frontline workers were diagnosed or presumed to be infected with COVID-19.
"Like a lot of people in this country, I get angry if I can't get a Christmas present from Amazon within three days." On Sunday, a pastor praying for the victims of the warehouse said in a eulogy, "But, please help me, help me put people before profit and convenience, before this huge system that we all fall into." ”
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