PHOTO/FIBANACCI BLUE
Outrage swept a Minnesota Amazon Fulfillment Center after the company discovered a man lying on the floor for 20 minutes in apparent cardiac arrest, and workers were told: “Get back to work.”
“No time to decompress. Basically watch a man pass away and then get told to go back to work, everyone, and act like it’s fine,” said an employee.
This is not the first death at Amazon. Six workers died on the job between November 2018 and April 2019. Amazon, owned by the wealthiest man in the world, is on the Dirty Dozen list of the Council for Occupational Safety and Health, citing its high incidence of worker suicide attempts, overworked employees peeing in bottles to avoid punishment, and poor treatment of contract and temporary workers, which Amazon relies on for all operations.
Companies today are driven to get their products to a shrinking and competitive world market as fast as possible in order to clinch the sale and maximize profits. Any semblance of morality is a thing of the past. If it means working people to death, so be it.
And, simultaneously, companies are installing machines that produce cheaper, without our labor.
Our bright light is the morality and solidarity expressed by the working class. That spirit is pointing us to a new kind of society that cares for us all. In such a society the machines, abundance they produce, and wealth will belong to the people and be shared by all.
