Posted on 11/30/2019 9:03:25 AM PST by heartwood
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[Indiana, Amazon warehouse] On Sept. 24, just a few days after he’d been eating ice cream and watching college football with his grandkids, [Phillip Lee) Terry showed up for work and was sent to do maintenance on a forklift. He walked under the machine’s forks and metal platform to work on it with a wrench. Suddenly, the 1,200-pound piece of equipment dropped down and crushed him.
His body lay there nearly two hours before a co-worker noticed the pool of blood....
...
Indiana OSHA issued four serious safety citations, for a total fine of $28,000. [Inspector John] Stallone sought more, but he was getting pushback. On Nov. 20, 2017, Stallone joined his boss, Indiana OSHA Director Julie Alexander, as she called Amazon officials. He secretly recorded the conversation, which is legal in the state, and shared the recording with Reveal.
During the call, Alexander told the Amazon officials what she’d need from them in order to shift the blame from the company to “employee misconduct,” according to the recording.
And she walked them through how to negotiate down the fines. “We sometimes like to consider grouping citations to lower the penalty amounts,” she said.
She suggested Amazon could partner with her agency as a “leader in safety” to kick off a program promoting best practices in the logistics industry.
After hanging up with Amazon, Alexander said: “They’re wanting to probably take this offer and go back and look and say, ‘Hey, we’re partnering with Indiana. We’re going to be the leader.’ ”
She told Stallone, “I hope you don’t take it personally if we have to manipulate your citations.”
Indiana OSHA issued four serious safety citations, for a total fine of $28,000. Stallone sought more, but he was getting pushback. On Nov. 20, 2017, Stallone joined his boss, Indiana OSHA Director Julie Alexander, as she called Amazon officials. He secretly recorded the conversation, which is legal in the state, and shared the recording with Reveal.
During the call, Alexander told the Amazon officials what she’d need from them in order to shift the blame from the company to “employee misconduct,” according to the recording.
And she walked them through how to negotiate down the fines. “We sometimes like to consider grouping citations to lower the penalty amounts,” she said.
She suggested Amazon could partner with her agency as a “leader in safety” to kick off a program promoting best practices in the logistics industry.
After hanging up with Amazon, Alexander said: “They’re wanting to probably take this offer and go back and look and say, ‘Hey, we’re partnering with Indiana. We’re going to be the leader.’ ”
She told Stallone, “I hope you don’t take it personally if we have to manipulate your citations.”
"Oh, Mr. Richest Man in the World, will you take 550 million to open a facility in our state?"
The bureaucrat is wrong for negotiating.
Amazon was wrong for not enforcing policy/proccedure independent of the pace.
Worker was wrong for not properly locking/tagging out under the lift. Should have had a fall stop or similar at a minimum.
OSHA can not possibly do their job
There’s way too many shotty contractors out there and idiots
I see it every day working on roofs
That’s my take as well. A maintenance guy should know to check the safeties. I sure would if I was going to stand in drop path of something big enough to kill me.
We’re up to our necks in double standards and corruption in the U.S.
I’m sorry to read about that poor guy losing his life in such a horrible way but damn it is practically Darwin Award territory. You never walk under a forklift. What could you possibly do to repair a forklift with the forks up in the air? Put the forks down or rest them on a stack of sturdy blocks. The wrench probably let all the hydraulic pressure off which was the only thing keeping the forks up. The guy was not a forklift mechanic. There is no way he had any business trying to fix it. Amazon would not have ordered someone who is not a forklift mechanic to try to repair one.
Like I said, Darwin Award.
And what does eating ice cream and watching college football have to do with rank stupidity? It is the trend in news reporting to make everything a human interest story. We have to feel sorry for the poor wretch so we can feel anger towards big bad Amazon for killing him with a forklift.
Bloomberg once answered a question about non-union contractors and the dangers they pose by saying that it was impossible to control.
This was to Republican party office holders when he was mayor, not to the public.
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