OSHA, Amazon in the News
Posted:
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Category:
OSHA and Safety
This September, Amazon.com and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) became the oddest couple to share the pages of some major news outlets, including the venerable New York Times. The beef? Amazon.com got too hot for its own good.
We all know that Amazon.com is a top-dog retailer, what with a whopping market value of $110 billion. That kind of value doesn’t come to be by chance. It got there because Amazon.com owns a whole galaxy of disposable desirables that you and I spend good dollars on to have Amazon.com deliver them to our doorsteps. Unbeknownst to many, these goods don’t enjoy the luxury of Santa’s elves’ stowing magic. These goods get stored instead in big, nonmagical warehouses all over America, such as the one in eastern Pennsylvania—the same one that caused Amazon.com’s unplanned appearance with OSHA in the news.
Last summer, the temperatures in the PA warehouse got so high (102 degrees) that 15 workers were reported to have collapsed. It seems that Amazon.com had its eyes elsewhere (on main competitor Santa, perhaps?) that it took an employee and not management to remedy the situation. The employee called OSHA.
Amazon.com, for its part, was quick to issue an avowal to healthy working conditions and worker safety. It did very well to have hired the employee who was all too happy to report it to OSHA. Almost certainly, that employee had an OSHA 30 course or OSHA 10 training, which teaches workers to recognize unsafe working conditions—and how to report erring employers.
