(C) Common Dreams
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Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame [1]
["Caroline O'Donovan", 'Buzzfeed News Reporter', 'Ken Bensinger']
Date: 2023-04
Amazon can surveil almost every driver in its delivery network. But when it comes to the pedigree of the companies it entrusts to deliver its cargo, officials are remarkably hands-off, overlooking serious safety lapses, criminal convictions, and egregious violations of labor laws.
Amazon said it expects its delivery operators to comply with the law.
In July 2015, an obscure mining firm in Idaho abruptly changed ownership and announced it was getting into the package delivery business for Amazon, under the unlikely new name of Scoobeez.
Just months after making its first deliveries, however, the company was sued by four drivers who successfully claimed they had been misclassified as contractors rather than employees. It would be the first in a string of employment, personal injury, contract, and workplace discrimination lawsuits filed against the firm.
In March 2017, the company’s CFO sent a 25-page report to the Scoobeez board of directors alleging that CEO Shahan Ohanessian had misappropriated as much as $1.5 million of the company’s funds, transferring the money to his own bank accounts and withdrawing hundreds of thousand of dollars of that money at the Wynn hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Subsequent investigations concluded that Ohanessian then took out 17 high-interest loans to cover his tracks, costing the company some $2 million in fees and interest payments — money that might have been used to pay the drivers who were suing the company for unpaid overtime or, for example, the Texas family who came home one day to find that a Scoobeez van had rolled down their driveway and into their house, smashing the side of their attached garage.
In April, Scoobeez filed for bankruptcy protection, listing, among other liabilities, monthly payments totaling nearly $7,000 for leased Bentley, Porsche, and Mercedes-Benz luxury vehicles that were made available to the company’s top executives.
Scoobeez denied, in a separate court filing, the former CFO’s embezzlement allegations, saying they were fabricated and part of a ploy to take control of the company. Ashley McDow, an attorney representing Scoobeez in its ongoing bankruptcy, said the company had nothing to add beyond what is in the public record.
As of late August, the company continues to recruit delivery drivers for locations throughout Southern California, Illinois, and Texas — and in court records, it has claimed that 99% of its revenue comes from Amazon. Newly filed personal injury lawsuits continue to roll in, and in May, Enterprise sued Scoobeez, claiming it owed it more than $700,000 for damages to vans it had leased the company.
Ohanessian and his wife are no longer with Scoobeez and lately have turned to another possible get-rich scheme: putting logistics on the blockchain.
In 2017, Courier Distribution Systems, another of Amazon’s larger delivery providers, was notified by Inc. magazine that it was one of the 500 fastest-growing privately held startups in the country. “Welcome,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief wrote in a congratulatory letter, “to the most exclusive club in business!”
Like other Amazon delivery companies, CDS — based outside of Atlanta but delivering Amazon packages in several states, including Wisconsin, California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois — was required to carry a full slate of insurance.
In addition to cargo, business, and general legal liability coverage, Amazon requires delivery firms to carry workers' compensation policies, which are designed to cover the costs of medical care for employees injured on the job as well as any lost wages.
But that system failed Aleasa Thomas, who worked for CDS in the Milwaukee area. In April 2017, while completing a delivery to a house, Thomas said, she was violently attacked by a dog, causing her to fall and hit her head.
Only later did Thomas discover that CDS — which had earned its place on the Inc. list by growing at least 10 times larger over the previous three years — had failed to pay its workers' compensation premiums in Wisconsin between February and June of 2017, meaning she was not covered. CDS was later hit with a $154,000 judgment for failing to pay workers' compensation insurance in the state.
Jim Blanchard, a CDS representative, acknowledged the four-month insurance lapse but said it occurred while the firm was applying for different coverage. He added that CDS paid all of Thomas’s “medical bills, all of her unpaid wages, and any other losses.”
Wisconsin was far from the only region where CDS appears to have fallen fell behind on its bills. The firm has faced at least two dozen lawsuits and other claims in recent years by employees who say it didn’t correctly pay them, fired them without cause, or discriminated against them. Some of those cases settled out of court. A tire company near San Diego won an $11,578 judgment against the company in November 2017 after CDS failed to pay its bills.
Elsewhere, CDS had faced a mutiny from some of its drivers. Jovon Bray, a dispatcher at CDS in Sacramento, said he was forced to quell a near riot in October 2015 when roughly 100 angry drivers showed up to work demanding to know why they hadn’t been properly paid. When Bray called a manager at headquarters for advice, he recalled being told, “You need to find a better lie to tell them.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/amazon-next-day-delivery-deaths
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