Thursday, September 05, 2019

The Human Cost of Amazon’s Fast, Free Shipping (NY Times)

Amazon abuses its monopoly power to exploit workers and consumers and is a serial tortfeasor, hiding behind unlabelled vans for speedy deliveries. Amazon lacks business ethics or scruples. Its owner, JEFFREY BEZOS, owns The Washington Post.


Fromn= Pro Publica and The New York Times:







Credit

The Human Cost of Amazon’s Fast, Free Shipping

Amazon directs the destinations, deadlines and routes for its network of contract delivery drivers. But when they crash, the retail giant is shielded from responsibility.
CreditCreditVideo by Taylor Glascock For Propublica
This article is co-published with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom.
When she added Gabrielle’s name to the chart in her kitchen, Judy Kennedy could picture the annual ritual. At birthdays she would ask her newest grandchild to stand up straight, heels against the door frame, so she could mark Gabrielle’s height beside that of her other granddaughter in the Maine house the family has lived in since the 1800s.
But there are no lines for Gabrielle.
In January, the 9-month-old was killed when a driver delivering Amazon.com packages crashed a 26-foot rented box truck into the back of her mother’s Jeep. The baby was strapped into a car seat in the back.
The delivery driver, a subcontractor ferrying pallets of Amazon boxes from suburban Boston to five locations in Maine, said in an interview that he was running late and failed to spot the Jeep in time to avoid the crash.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: When Fast, Free Shipping Delivers Heartbreak.

No comments: