Safety Knights

Maybe their newly-formed unions will help get them on track - especially now that they're on strike!

was just reading that actually - big story!

So Amazon has a ton of work to do to minimize these ergonomic issues. I used to work at a delivery warehouse, where we'd receive trucks for our local area, sort packages and load them on carts for delivery. I actually did a risk assessment on one of the jobs for a safety class. There's a lot to say so I'll try to keep it short. At this location one job has a lot of bending and twisting no matter how you do it, this job an employee takes packages ranging from a few ounces up to 49 lbs off a cart or a pallet and places them on a conveyor. This person is turning frequently, even if they move their feet there is still significant twisting and bending. Another job an employee takes these same packages off a shelf and puts them into bags for sorting. These bags are on the floor to a height of about 6 ft. off the floor. In this job the bigger packages are put on separate shelf instead of the bags. Lastly after all the sorting and stowing is done, they go through with carts and get these bags which are about 2ft square and put as many as 9 on a cart and pull that cart to a staging area for drivers to put on their vans. Now Amazon does try to put safety first, they have a safety "team" of employees and management in place though management is the only one I ever heard say anything about safe actions. We would do a few stretches before shift every day and they would "remind" you to pull the carts in a correct position even though most carts were so heavy you ended up dragging them behind you. PPE wise in this location you were issued gloves and were to wear safety toe shoes. If you didn't have safety toe shoes they had slip on covers that had safety toe.

Now as far as unions go, I support the unionization, but, when I was a union employee only thing they did for me was seniority. I was a county government employed paramedic.