OT (for now): Amazon being sued for death of employee's family member
In what is likely to be the beginning of an avalanche of suits (over the coming months) against employers of all sorts (probably universities as well), an Amazon employee is alleging unsafe work conditions contributed to a COVID death.
Might be worth observation.
I hope he loses. If he wasn't willing to accept the risk of catching an infectious disease, he should have quit his job and stayed home. Are we going to try to hold our employers liable for all of the auto-accident deaths that happen while commuting to work every year as well?
"If those girls didn't want to be trapped in a burning shirtwaist, they should've quit and stayed home, even though they'd probably lose that home if they quit their job"
Technically, they were making shirtwaists. They died in a triangle.
If employees of the worlds most valuable company must choose between making a living and not contracting a lethal virus, we have failed as a society.
This particular suit will be thrown out, but your obvious disdain for worker protection is disgusting.
Commuting to work wouldn't apply, but if you had to drive somewhere because of work you better believe the company is liable. One of my coworkers got into an accident visiting a vendor on his way to work and the company ended up working with him on a comp claim.
While I do not expect this lawsuit to go anywhere, I expect them to continue. In some cases, if the companies haven't done enough to limit the spread and provide a reasonably safe environment, they might actually hit home.
It's going to be very tough to prove you contracted COVID-19 at work as well. That's a big hurdle for any employee and their attorney to clear in the coming suits.
I was alone a lot.
Mostly observing things, like ‘is that cow pregnant or not?’
More is always better, ‘cause when you have less, you have more to lose.
You haven’t been alone. Try on the farm with no bars.
"You don't have to be lonely at farmersonly.com"
I think XM has a farm with bars.
Wait, on second thought, I know he has a farm. And the bar part is separate from the farm.
Either way, I'm certain he could help you in how to identity a pregnant cow.
I firmly believe the threat of lawsuits is why my large bank employer is keeping most of us working remotely. At this point I expect we won’t be required to go into the office until September earliest.
Yep, absolutely.
If one gets infected, it's basically impossible at this point to definitively say "I was infected by person X at place Y!" But, people are still going to try to say that. So companies won't court the risk. Amazon has big pockets, so of course they are the subject of this and future lawsuits.
My work informed the office staff of more than 1,400 that we are staying home until AT LEAST 9/1. My wife’s employer (5,000+) is saying Labor Day for their office staff.
i appreciate the cautiousness, but I would like to go back into the office once a week or so just to break up the week a bit. Staying home is making me a bit stir crazy, but at least we’re safe.
If we're being completely honest, it's 2021 at this point for a return to the office for many --- if not most --- places. Literally another 6+ months.
I don't think I've mentioned this here prior, but I accepted a new job back in March --- on Wednesday March 11th. The day the pandemic was declared and the NBA cancelled their season! Great timing by me. :-)
So I started my new job remote and that is how it has been for 2+ months now. It's fine, but it has definitely added a layer of difficulty to relationship- and connection-building w/ colleagues. I'd like to have some office time, even if just 2 days a week, for that.
I go into the office every day and I'm plenty safe.
Same here Dave. How did things go at your shop? We did remarkably well for a company that hates to spend money on technology, or really anything other than stock buybacks.
About half the company was still using desktops and they managed to get everyone a laptop and VPN access much faster than I would have thought was possible.
We can go into the office if needed and have been running our factory with 500 employees per week the entire time with minimal impact - but we're provided PPE, temperature checks, 3x/week deep cleaning of the facility, etc. And the company has told us that there will be no full-time office return to work until there is an effective treatment or vaccine. We'll add more people gradually, but WFH is here to stay.
This will be dismissed quickly. Has no merit.
Would the employee have to prove that the she was infected at work to win? Then she would have to prove that her cousin got it from her? Despite several other family members also having it? That seems like a tall order given that ~20% of NY has had it. I’m not saying Amazon is a beacon of morality here, but I’m struggling to see how they’d prove that chain of infection given the variables and lack of information (testing and contact tracing) at the time.
My Guess is they want to get amazon to settle out of court, but I’d be shocked if amazon agrees, given the precedent it would set.
But the thing is we don't know how good the contact tracing is for this case. With that in mind, you can't really make that assumption.
If memory serves me correctly, a creative soul sued the Catholic church for damages resulting from hurricane Andrew after a representative for the church stated that the church represented God. The potential of holding an employer responsible for nature could be interesting, Obviously there could be a very specific fact set here that could make the employer liable in some extraordinarily unique way. Concerning if painted with broad strokes.
I'd rather see them taken to court under the Sherman Antitrust Act and be broken up. FB and Google too.
But apparently we don't do that anymore.
Someone needs to dig up Teddy Roosevelt and give him a big stick.
Do we want that? I know everyone hates the big corporations (and many of them deserve it) but Amazon is innovating in a way many others aren't, ways that are going to vastly improve our lives. I don't think we want to break that up.
Genuinely curious- what are a couple of those ways that their innovations will vastly improve our lives?
Not sure about their innovations that will (as in beyond what is already in place) improve lives, but as someone who used Amazon as early as 2000-2001 to order books (which is all they did at the time) - the changes they have effected to date are remarkable.
Hard to talk about future innovation, but AWS is, in my opinion, the single greatest innovation of the century. The number of companies that have been able to launch and scale rapidly because of the service compounds the value of the innovation. Plenty of arguments for others, like mobile computing, breakthroughs in bio tech, and social media, but i would personally go with AWS.
At this point I don't think we need to be treating Amazon extra generously anymore. We've already created market conditions that have rewarded them handsomely. If they get broken up, someone else will probably come up with those innovations: we don't need to be giving Amazon exclusive deals for stuff like that.
I don't necessarily know if they should be broken up or not, but what really bothers me is that they have a large negative tax rate. In 2018, they had a negative rate that yielded them a $129 million refund. That's insane to me; so not only did they not pay any taxes on $11 billion in profits but through credits, deductions, incentives, etc. America essentially gave away $129m to the world's most powerful company.
And collected untold millions in taxes from people working to create the products processed through Amazon, and all the other multiplier effects of an extended supply chain. Don't ge me wrong, having a single ubiquitous entity involved in my everyday life irritates me, but from an economic perspective, the benefits are not really contestable
I agree that the economic impact of Amazon is huge but they would still make that, or a very similar, impact if taxed appropriately. Not taxing Amazon lowers their net impact because their operations have a negative impact on infrastructure and other government services.
True, but why do we make exceptions for the biggest and most powerful companies? Why should those small vendors who operate on its platform or supply its products pay more than the platform itself? One of my buddies from UM (he went to the business school) loves Amazon. He's always trying to make the case for how great and innovative it is and how it creates jobs, etc. And I say that's great, but why do they deserve special treatment? Why does that entitle them to a negative tax rate and soft/generous oversight and regulation? At some point it feels like they're extracting more than they're putting in.
Those multiplier effects you mentioned are all positive things. But to me, it still doesn't merit American taxpayers paying them millions of dollars that are better spent elsewhere.
I admittedly don't know nearly enough about antitrust but does Amazon really control enough of the online shopping marketplace to be considered anywhere close to a monopoly? Same with Google and search engines and Facebook and social media?
There are a number of different ways to parse this, but I've seen Amazon's first-party and third-party combined market share anywhere between 35% and 49% of all e-commerce.
This article (Amazon’s antitrust paradox) from a few years ago kind of got the ball rolling on this. I’m no lawyer, but have listened to some commentary on NPR on the topic and they make some good points.
Amazon will have its day in court for some of their self-preferencing tactics and using data from third-party sellers to develop and price their own products, but they are careful and strategic about their acquisitions, so I doubt they will be broken up. Amazon is a huge company with its fingers in several pies, but they have competitors for each business they are in.
Amazon has also caused other companies to innovate the way they do business like the 1 hour pick up windows at Target for example.
That's why the meat packers got POTUS to use DPA to keep going. Good idea on their part.
I would think they would not be able to carry their burden of proof with respect to causation. These suits are great news for lawyers, I guess. For everyone else, not so much.
I don't know where the lawsuits of the future are going to fall. This is uncharted waters for companies and the legal system. What I do wonder about is how this impacts college athletes and if there are any behind-the-scenes discussions happening. The following scenario seems very likely to me...
Offensive lineman for...let's say Georgia...is playing late this season. There's an outbreak of Covid on the team, most of which is with asymptomatic players but it is clear that it is going around the locker-room. Georgia keeps playing as they have a big game coming up - no isolation, no cancellation of games. The OL gets Covid and has a pretty rough case of it - no death or even ventilation, but is wiped out for 3 weeks while recovering. (So he doesn't fall into the stats often used by those downplaying this virus for mortality rate or risk to young, healthy football players.)
This OL was an NFL prospect but his bout with Covid has now left him with lingering side-effects that prevent him from playing in the bowl game or working out. His recovery is slow and it remains unclear if he'll ever return to 100%. The NFL draft happens....this OL, once expected to be an early pick, now isn't picked at all. Does he sue Georgia for not taking better safety measures? The SEC? The NCAA? He will never recover lost earnings from the draft pick and maybe he can't even play football again.
This is an interesting question. Here would be my take - or maybe counter-take.
We hear stories all the time about a "bug going around the locker room" and players "playing through it" or "playing sick." I have no idea, but I'd be willing to bet that in the past FB players have "played sick" and gotten sicker, had a season-ending injury while doing so, etc. I am sure some have also been pressured by coaches, staff, and teammates to "play sick" for the "sake of the team." Can you imagine Bo, Mo, Lloyd or Jim responding to a player saying they want to sit out a game because they are "just a little sick," or worse yet, because "they know a bug is going around the locker room, and while they feel perfectly fine, they don't want to take chances with the health"???
Now, I am NOT SAYING Covid-19 is nothing more than the flu - we now know for certain it is more deadly, at least for a certain segment of the population - but would a lawsuit for a player who caught influenza in the locker room and played anyway, and then went through the series of negative career events you describe, pass the smell test and be successful? I have a feeling it would not. Now, then, we have to treat this as a matter of statistical degree - is Covid-19 significantly enough more dangerous than something like influenza or the common cold to hold teams to a higher standard of culpability if a player were to (possibly) catch it in the locker room and play anyway? If the CDC statistics and virtually everything else out there are correct and an otherwise healthy 22 year old has virtually no chance of getting seriously sick and/or dying from Covid-19, SHOULD the teams be held to this higher standard?
To clarify, the choice is between staying home and having a very small risk of dying, not between going to work and dying.
Also, anyone who says that quitting your job is not an option is being irrational.
This suit should be laughed out of court, but unfortunately it won't be. That failure to recognize individual responsibility is part of what got us to this point where the CDC, FDA, state and federal governments are all impeding progress instead of helping.
They also stopped the temporary $2/hr "hazard pay" increase, so not a good week for Amazon's optics. Not that Bezos particularly cares, but still.
Oh so the pandemic is over huh. Great news!
Exactly why you limit society, limit who actually needs to be in an office, and wait for a vaccine.