Indiana manipulated report on Amazon worker’s death, investigation says

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2019/11/25/amazon-indiana-governor-eric-holcomb-warehouse-accident-hq-2/4282653002/

by donohoe • 7 years ago

181 62 7 years ago

indystar.com

jtmarl1n• 7 years ago

The Indiana Governor disputes the allegation: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2019/11/2....

I find it interesting the whistle blower claims the governor attended a meeting where pressure was applied to back off the investigation. The Governor claims he never attended a meeting. Wouldn't this be an easy item to fact check by getting records of meeting attendees?

qsymmachus2• 7 years ago

You could think of this as a simple "he said she said", but what possible benefit does the whistleblower stand to gain from making this story up? Whereas the governor has a very obvious incentive to deny the whole thing happened.

jdsully• 7 years ago

The whistle-blower may prefer another candidate for governor. Both entities can be politically motivated.

zentiggr3• 7 years ago

Should be almost irrelevant if the mentioned recording with the director is still around.

Just play that on the evening news every day until Amazon pays full death benefits and punitive fines to the Terry family.

Oh yeah, and arraign the director on criminal conspiracy charges. And the governor too.

jessaustin4• 7 years ago

They played an excerpt on the "Reveal" podcast the other day, so it's probably still around...

vanusa2• 7 years ago

The Indiana Governor disputes the allegation.

What he disputed (according to the article) was his personal involvement in the case, and his attendance at a particular meeting.

He did not dispute allegations of interference by state agencies, per se.

throwaway_se099• 7 years ago

The Governor claims he never attended a meeting. Wouldn't this be an easy item to fact check by getting records of meeting attendees?

That meeting was probably never on the official schedule. There are numerous ways to arrange such things off the books. The Gov's office can certainly provide the schedule which will give him plausible deniability, after which it's he said she said, unless another witness comes forward.

(If the above strikes you as too underhanded and sleazy, well, the whole affair is such. The lure of Amazon HQ2 was in play, remember.)

ActorNightly• 7 years ago

I highly doubt Amazon cares about $28000

qsymmachus2• 7 years ago

They probably care more about bad publicity than fines, especially since they're already under public scrutiny for their treatment of warehouse workers.

ab71e5• 7 years ago

That's what I thought.

Maybe it is about the state showing what it could do for Amazon in the future, should they build their HQ there? Or maybe it is more about saving the image of the company then the actual fine?

stevenwoo• 7 years ago

It's mentioned in the Reveal (investigative radio news source) coverage that Indiana had an active bid for HQ2 at the time the coverup happened.

nashashmi• 7 years ago

The warehouse business is a loss or low on profit. $28000 is a lot for one warehouse.

erentz2• 7 years ago

A really clear case of corruption both at Amazon and within the state labor departments. The fines are so small I’m not sure why Amazon didn’t just reject corruption like this and do things right. Really just speaks to a company culture completely lacking any morals.

criley22• 7 years ago

Why would small fines mean they should behave correctly? Small fines make it easy to justify as "cost of doing business". It's the large onerous fines which incentivize them to do it the less-profitable and more-moral way, because the fines cost more than doing it right.

Hate to be cliche, but reminds me of the opening scene in Fight Club where Edward Norton's character describes how insurance adjusters(?) determine if a recall is cheaper than the lawsuits from dead/injured people, they do it, otherwise... they don't.

Why would Amazon behave less profitably? Simply because we perceive it to be more moral?

drharby2• 7 years ago

And the kicker I'd like to add to the conversation is, 'who's morals are more moral than the others?'

CodeMage• 7 years ago

Why would Amazon behave less profitably? Simply because we perceive it to be more moral?

Yes. Why is this so controversial? Why are we okay with profits being more important than ethics?

erentz2• 7 years ago

Say you’re the guy working at Amazon over this issue and some corrupted state agency starts trying to give you advice on how to limit your responsibilities, shift blame onto the worker, smear the worker, etc.

The question is at that point what do you do? And to boot the amount of money being saved by this will be peanuts.

I would say something to the effect of “stop I don’t want a part in that please follow the correct process and investigate properly.” That’s what should happen when faced with incidents like this.

wpietri• 7 years ago

Because Amazon is not some fell-from-space killer blob, but a collection of human beings, who all should have moral senses?

The notion that we can design a perfect legal system that will always coerce prosocial behavior from sociopaths is absurd. One of the founding assumptions of a democracy is that most people, being humans, will behave humanely. In some circumstances, they need guidance and modest incentives, which is why we have things like building codes, health codes, and workplace safety standards. In rarer circumstances, some people are so awful that we need criminal sanctions to remove bad apples from the ability to cause harm.

We should not expect people to give up their moral sense just because they are cashing a paycheck. And we must not excuse leaders for being monsters just because they get a bigger slice of the pie.

Ididntdothis2• 7 years ago

Amazon deserves some blame but the real corruption is on the government agency’s side. Their job is to execute their jobs following rules. Stuff like this shouldn’t be even possible in a well run country.

zentiggr3• 7 years ago

The underlying problem is the perceived benefits vs <s> just a small adjustment of facts </s>. Been going on since humans started businesses.

This is why whistleblowers deserve protection above and beyond normal lawsuit situations, because there's almost always a big incumbent on the other end of the deal who still wants the story squashed.

More calls for transparency, more calls for public offices to be held accountable, will always be needed to push back against the tide of influence from all the money floating around.

Good for Stallone for quitting and reporting, and I hope this gets way broader coverage along with every other story like this.

jessaustin4• 7 years ago

The worst thing that happened was that Amazon killed one of their employees. Covering that up and not punishing them for it was bad, but let's keep some sense of perspective here.

Lots of folks on HN are in management. I'll assume that none of them have killed any employees recently... Was that because the proper government agencies have regularly informed them of their duty not to kill employees? Or was it rather that many of us are human beings and don't want to regularly kill people just to save few dollars on e.g. sufficient training programs?

vanusa2• 7 years ago

Stuff like this shouldn’t be even possible in a well run country.

And the reason this isn't a "well-run country"... is what, exactly?

Might the influence of companies like Amazon have something to do with it?

fzeroracer• 7 years ago

Except isn't this exactly what companies like Amazon want? They lobby for lessened regulations and bribe their way into government offices so that when they get exposed doing something bad the blame gets shifted to the government for not doing their job.

alexithym• 7 years ago

I'd like to believe that this was a culture failure isolated to a single fulfillment center, but that seems like a convenient way to absolve Amazon of guilt.

At the end of the day, it's Amazon's responsibility to enforce a safety culture in each and every fulfillment center, and failing to do so is inexcusable.

ksml• 7 years ago

This article feels a little fishy to me. The title says an "investigation says" "Indiana manipulated a report," but there's no evidence to suggest this besides one person's claims and it doesn't seem there was any official investigation into whether the report was manipulated. Also, all the figures appear to be an order of magnitude off... All this fuss over only $28,000? And a single $1,000 donation? That's a drop in the pond. I wouldn't be surprised if there was indeed a lot of corruption in bidding for Amazon's HQ, but something doesn't add up here for me.

jessaustin4• 7 years ago

The original article [0], which for some reason "indystar" doesn't care to link, has links to source material.

[0] https://www.revealnews.org/article/behind-the-smiles/

macintux• 7 years ago

A long, compelling piece by The Atlantic covered this and other Amazon horror stories this month.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/11/amazo...

0xmohit• 7 years ago

Another Amazon horror story:

https://qz.com/482080/dear-jeff-bezos-i-wish-you-had-asked-f...

ertemplin• 7 years ago

I don't understand why people in these situations don't quit or internal transfer. Everyone else on the team left except for him but he thought things would get better? He should have left long before the bad performance review.

nanoscopic• 7 years ago

Additional story: https://amazonandmykid.com

( my own )

Suffice it to say Amazon does not care about employees, neither at the warehouses nor at their corporate headquarters.

When I was there a guy jumped off a building because they wouldn't let him switch off a toxic team. They also similarly tried to prevent me from switching teams when I was there.

A week ago I was at one of the Amazon retail stores and an employee there agreed that Amazon cares nothing for their employees. Obviously one should take this with a grain of salt as this is just a random statement from a random retail employee, but this is generally what I hear from Amazon workers both current and ex.

The general word on the street in Seattle is "Amazon sucks" to the extent I've heard Amazon employees referred to as Amholes.

larnmar• 7 years ago

When I was there a guy jumped off a building because they wouldn't let him switch off a toxic team

I mean, they would have let him leave the company, right? It seems unreasonable to blame Amazon for this guy’s tragic decision, since any reasonable person would have taken a more reasonable exit.

jorblumesea• 7 years ago

The general word on the street in Seattle is "Amazon sucks"

Just about every dev that it's in the region knows this. It's why their recruiters constantly spam talent in the region. Insane turnover, and you have a very short shelf life due to burnout. It's also why their compensation is mostly in stock. They know you won't last to collect your RSUs.

trenning• 7 years ago

When I was there a guy jumped off a building because they wouldn't let him switch off a toxic team

This guy's manager was also promoted in the next promo cycle.

Amazon really makes it clear they're a fucking awful company filled with immoral employees.

I've got a laundry list of Amazon horror stories.

nottorp• 7 years ago

<quote> Amazon’s corporate offices in Seattle gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to Indiana’s governor. It was years before Holcomb would next face reelection, and Amazon hasn’t donated to him before or since. </quote>

US state governors are this cheap? :)

darzu• 7 years ago

Lobbyist are clever. It often isn't the money directly given that matters, but the threat of giving money to the opponent.

Crontab• 7 years ago

This is sad. I used to work in a warehouse and we were mandated to have training in proper forklift use. There is no excuse for Amazon not conducting proper training.

The Indiana officials who tried to cover this up should have their ass put in a sling.

frankharv• 7 years ago

How about Federal level OSHA refusing to get involved. That is seriously messed up. He even had the audio of the IOSHA coverup and that was not enough for OSHA?

Forklift training is one thing. Forklift maintenance is not something you could easily teach. It is learned by years of on the job experience.

Something that Amazon was not willing to pay for with Forklift Maintenance Mechanics.

Disgusting show from all parties involved. There should be a FBI investigation and the Governors phone location data used. I bet the whistle-blower is right.

fredgrott• 7 years ago

especially when Indiana mandates the training as you need the Indiana cert to drive one.

I'm from Indiana, years ago we had the Indiana License Branch Director be diagnosed with narcolepsy and still had a driving license..no joke this state has no logic

LastZactionHero• 7 years ago

It's embarrassing to watch proud cities (my hometown) humiliate themselves like game show contestants for this HQ.

Indiana manipulated report on Amazon worker’s death, investigation says

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