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Amazon Faces $350K Fine For Shipping 'Amazing Liquid Fire' (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The FAA has ruled that Amazon will face a $350,000 fine for shipping a one-gallon container of "Amazing Liquid Fire" by air. The corrosive drain cleaner was sent by air from Louisville, Kentucky, to Boulder, Colorado, on October 15, 2014. The container leaked during transit and nine UPS employees came into contact with the chemical, which caused a "burning sensation on their skin" that had to be treated with a chemical wash. According to Computerworld, "The FAA ruled the shipment wasn't packaged properly, wasn't accompanied by a declaration of dangerous goods, and was not properly marked or labeled as a hazardous package. It also said Amazon didn't provide emergency response information with the package and had not provided hazardous material training to employees who handled the package." The FAA said in a statement, "Amazon has a history of violating the Hazardous Materials Regulations." They apparently violated the rules 24 other times.
This fine is nothing to a company like Amazon. It's a slap on the wrist rather than a significant penalty.
They didn't violate the rules 24 other times, they got caught 24 other times. I would be surprised if the packages leak more than 1% of the time so they've probably violated the rules thousands of times at least.
If enough leaked to affect 9 employees handling the box after the flight then there's a reasonable possibility that the escaped liquid now poses a corrosion hazard to the aircraft structure. UPS should send them the bill for the complete inspection and overhaul of the affected areas of the aircraft used to transport it. Perhaps that will be more than the fine.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Imagine a drone doing that delivery !
The MSDS for the product says sulfuric acid and Rodine.
Rodine is an acid inhibitor that attempts to prevent corrosion of metals by acids.
The liquid fire MSDS doesn't say specifically the concentrations (I hate that), but other drain cleaners of that type can be nearly 100% sulfuric acid.
It wouldn't come as a surprise if the thing was almost pure H2SO4.
Sulfuric acid is essentially sulfur trioxide gas dissolved in water. If the atmospheric pressure goes down, the SO3 gas comes out of solution, where it can hang around and then redissolve on moist surfaces, such as mucous membranes and moist eye tissue.
UPS is union and they need to sue to recover the costs that they suffered.
Don't get me started on all the double standards that UPS has going on in their shipping departments with their employees. That place is a sweatshop and the Union is in on it and has been since the 1980s!
By their own rules no loader is supposed to lift a package with a circumference around its widest part greater than 70 inches or weighing more than 70 kilograms.
That being said, I got a chewing out by a manager who sent down a bundle of solid steel bars that was 3 ft in circumference and was 12 ft long and weighed about 300 pounds and I was told "Just throw it in the truck!"
I complained about it to a higher up shift manager and the next day was fired.
They are lucky that I had another job lined up otherwise I would have totally sued their asses.
Realize though UPS is a shit job, where you pay about half your income in union dues for a union that basically does nothing for the employee and you are forced to work in an environment where safety rules are never followed and in 120 degree heat.
I ship Fed Ex where possible these days.
As mentioned elsewhere, on Amazing Liquid Fire's Amazon page, it is frequently bought with "Red Hot Devil Lye" (Sodium Hydroxide).
If both substances come in contact during transit on a plane...things would get very exciting very quickly.
My Diet Coke can't make it past airport security but something named "Amazing Liquid Fire" can?
Meh, that stuff is weak. When my sinks clog I use fuming hydrochloric acid.
I'm not kidding.
There was this one time that a company violated safety rules multiple times resulting in substantial human pain and suffering. The courts decided to fine them punitive damages in the amount of 2.7 million dollars, which was still a trivial amount of money to the company.
This is the most often quoted case of our court systems abusing companies and coddling litigious citizens. But it is the epitome of what you are asking for here...
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
You haven't been to Amazon's secret 3rd party suppliers then who masquerade as "Amazon warehouse". Amazon likes to keep this a big secret and not let anyone known. Even the owners aren't allowed to speak about it, but the places I visit who warehouse my stuff, I see the Amazon labels being printed and handling Amazon orders. They're not the brightest people of the bunch (Low skilled minimum wage labor, you think they give a damn what gets shipped?) and Amazon doesn't really have any control of them or what they do (Underpaid management), at least from what I can see. So yeah, I more than likely believe hazardous material is being shipped by Amazon all the time without them notifying anyone.
And if you think Amazon demands they abide to a certain standard, yeah, good luck. I can't even get these warehouse guys to do it and keep proper inventory. They'll nod their heads, yeah yeah, but the reality is, low paid workers really don't care, but when you need the warehouse space, you really don't have much choice in the matter (They're all like this).
You don't want to kill Amazon, just make it comply. I'd say that 350 K for a single transgression will get their attention. If not, the next penalty will be higher.
the Union is in on it
That's true of Verizon as well. Don't expect them to protect you as an employee.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have worked at UPS in probably the exact role you briefly did, "part time package handler," for twelve years now. You aren't wrong that it's drudgery and physical hardship, but you're kind of full of shit.
If you'd wanted to keep your job, wanted to complain, the union and the regulatory environment you live in in the United States are almost the most supportive environment for that you'll find on the planet. Some places are more careful; however all major institutions in society that have a large workforce are by design and nature keystone cop operations. You were the one who had a problem, and you didn't do anything about it. You seem, like lots of people, to want the excuse that those in authority let you down and you had to act as you did in response, that you got fired, not quit; that you were victimized.
I don't know if I have ever seen a 300 pound object in my building, in all my years there. Yes, I have seen things above the 150 pound weight limit, perhaps three or four a year. Hardly ever on the belt if not never, almost always on the floor, if not always. The people just like you and I who unload the trucks and the people who sort what's unloaded have no incentive to send something like that across. It could have happened, and I'm not calling you a liar. My experience leads me to suspect you're exaggerating the details though, both the severity of the hardship you encountered and the severity of the response.
I only bother to say all of this because I think this is the Santa Claus myth endangering civilization right now, that people are competent and institutions are as well, and they need to be treated as such and relied on to live up to their promises, and that we as individuals can place some misfortune from our own lives at their feet. I totally disagree. Every moment of my life has taught me the opposite.
Adult human beings and organizations so comprised are fallible, negligent, and in way way over their heads in exactly the ways you would take for granted that little children are. Looking down on a bunch of uneducated, sweaty middle aged men who yell into walkie talkies and nag other grown men to do physical chores that they themselves angrily thought, mistakenly, that they wouldn't have to do anymore upon promotion to full time management...well, that's mean. Even if they are paid well, and even if they have people beneath them they mistreat, everyone's expectations are too high. The ones in charge at a place like a UPS building are crabs terrified of being dropped back in the bucket. They abuse other people through their incompetence and small amounts of petty malice, but they are simply men who statistically tend to be morons, in charge of others from a larger population which is probably even less competent on average.
Christianity did a good job of advancing the cause of accepting an imperfect world, but something needs to come along to teach people to deal rationally with an imperfect creation and ultimate authority no more competent than its cast offs.
I don't know if I have ever seen a 300 pound object in my building, in all my years there.
Oh come on now. I am sure other slashdotters work there, too.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Hey, you! We're gonna take 10% of your worth because one of your hundreds of thousands of hires fucked up doing a couple of the millions of things your company does every day!"
The problem with that line of thinking is three-fold.
First, it *is* the corporate officers (as well as management all the way up and down) to make sure that the employees are properly trained to do their jobs. The vast majority of times an employee screws up, its because they weren't trained to do the job properly (or at all in some cases).
This is a symptom of point 2: Shareholders (including the CEO) are not liable for the liabilities of the company, even in criminal cases. This gives the shareholders impunity to not care what the CEO does as long as it brings in more money. You want to ensure that CEOs pay closer attention to what is going on, end limited liability, and ensure that the shareholders have a reason to breathe down the neck of the CEO for everything that might get them sued. To those that think ending limited liability would be the end of the world, I would suggest that people with extra money are always going to chase the best interest rates. Business will continue, just the investors will be a whole lot more careful about where they put their money. This kind of limited liability would have killed SCO instantly, as the likes of Microsoft and others would not have been willing to risk any investment with all of the downside risk SCO had.
Third, the inept employee is largely a symptom of wage inequality. Why would some peon on the bottom rung be willing to go the extra steps when they know that their extra efforts wil benefit the corporate officers and the shareholders far more than it benefits themselves? Employees used to be loyal to the company because the company appeared to do things that were beneficial for the employees. More recently, companies have taken the overriding approach of figuring out how to make absolutely certain that every employee is expendable and replaceable. That cuts both ways, if an employee know they are replaceable at the drop of a hat, and the compensation for their time is crap, then they will do their level best to fulfill those expectations.
In summary, ethical behavior on the part of a company is directly opposed to profits. Given our societal attitude to capitalism, this will continue to create the kinds of behavior we have seen in the last three decades. In order to fix the problem, capitalism has to go. The big mystery is what do we replace it with?
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Sometimes people fuck things up. If one guy packing shit in a warehouse screws up one time, you want to dismantle an entire company?
I have a great deal of experience both working on a line, and as a supervisor, and I can tell you without doubt that properly trained people do not make mistakes at that level. Mistakes like this happen because an entire series of events, that should have happened, didn't happen. A properly constructed process ensures that all of the critical paths to failure are covered multiple ways with validations in place. Failure to train is one of those basic steps, as is failure to hold your management accountable. If you want a company to ensure a proper process, then yes, I think it acceptable to burn a company to the ground for failing to put in place *any* of the dozens of procedures they should have had to prevent this kind of thing. That kind of behavior (and getting away with it) out of any company needs to be immediately squashed with a violent fury, because anything short of that does not change behaviors.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted