Apple’s iPhone 14 lineup has ditched the Mini. The apparent end of the smaller-phone came as Apple announced the iPhone 14, 14 Plus, 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, each with displays of 6.1 inches or more, at its fall product event — but nothing in a smaller size.

Independent market researchers predicted the demise of the Mini back in 2021, based on low sales. The iPhone 13 Mini represented 3% of Apple’s phone sales in the first quarter of 2022, according to data from Consumer Research Intelligence Partners. That was even worse than the 5% of sales that the iPhone 12 Mini represented in the first half 2021, according to Counterpoint.

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Both Mini versions had 5.4-inch screens.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Mini line featured phones with similar camera and processor features to their larger siblings. The Minis also came with a smaller price tag to match their smaller screens.

The end of the Mini doesn’t make massive screens mandatory for people who want a new iPhone. Apple still sells its iPhone SE, which got an upgrade earlier this year, with a 4.7-inch screen the company calls “pocket friendly.” In addition, the iPhone 13 Mini is still for sale.

Apple’s iPhone 14 is here

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When the iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max is locked, you won’t just see the dark, blank screen of an idle phone. With the new always-on display feature, the phone will show you the time, a hint of the lock screen background and information from widgets and a new live activities feature. 

The announcement came at Apple’s “Far Out” product event Wednesday, when the company revealed the new iPhone 14 line. The feature is the result of upgrades to display materials behind the screen and to the iPhone’s new operating system, iOS 16. The upshot is that you won’t have to touch or lift your phone just to see what time it is.

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“This keeps essential information available for the moments where all you need is just a glance,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said in the prerecorded video played at the event.

The concept will be familiar to many Android or Apple Watch users, including those with Samsung phones, who can already see some information at a glance even when screens aren’t in use. 

Hints that the feature was coming to iPhones showed up in iOS 16 code in June. The new phones have a lock screen that can keep displaying images without sucking up battery life, a previous barrier to an always-on feature. 

This has been made possible with specialized display materials that operate more efficiently. This tech includes low temperature polycrystalline oxide, more commonly called LPTO. The result is that phones can alter how much power screens use based on whether the device is showing dynamic graphics like videos or simpler visuals like text.

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• Apple iOS 16 Released: New iPhone Features From the Update

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In the span of a month this summer, four Amazon warehouse workers have died in separate incidents. While the details of each death are still forthcoming, the fatalities shine an even stronger spotlight on a common complaint about Amazon: that it requires a brutal pace of work and puts employees at risk of injury and overheating.

A range of circumstances surround the deaths. Rafael Reynaldo Mota Frias, 42, reportedly died of a heart attack in Carteret, New Jersey, as Prime Day was underway on July 13. Another worker, Rodger Boland, died after falling from a short ladder and hitting his head in Robbinsville, New Jersey. Alex Carillo, 22, died six days after an Aug. 1 forklift crash in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. 

A fourth worker, Eric Vadinsky, died after a workplace incident in Monroe Township, New Jersey, on Aug. 4. The deaths are all under investigation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which has six months to release its findings. 

Amazon expressed condolences to all the families of the deceased. “Each of these tragic incidents have affected our teams greatly, and we are providing resources for families and employees who need them,” said Amazon spokesman Sam Stephenson. “Our investigations are ongoing and we’re cooperating with OSHA, which is conducting its own reviews of the events, as it often does in these situations.”

The investigations come at a time when Amazon already faces probes from federal and state regulators on workplace safety as well as worker pushback against what they say are dangerously hot work spaces. OSHA opened a broad investigation that will examine working conditions at Amazon warehouses in three US cities: Chicago, Orlando and New York City. Additionally, a group of workers walked off the job at an Amazon air hub in San Bernardino, California, in August, protesting hot working conditions and pay. 

The deaths also come as people reexamine the role of Amazon in their lives in light of dangerous working conditions reported by news outlets, advocates and workers themselves. A group of 70 TikTok influencers signed onto a pledge in August promising to close down their Amazon storefronts and wish lists and to avoid entering into new agreements with Amazon to monetize their videos when users click through to Amazon’s marketplace.

Called out by the TikTokers: reports of excessive heat in warehouses and in trucks that workers must load and unload in the sun, in addition to Amazon’s response to union efforts in its warehouses. A photo shared by More Perfect Union, a workers’ rights group, shows the cargo area of an Amazon truck registering an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius). 

“Amazon is treating its workers like crap,” TikToker @asianlefty said in a video pointing out worker complaints of hot work spaces and limited water, adding that he was joining the People Over Prime Pledge. 

Amazon spokesman Stephenson pointed out that the company’s warehouses have climate control. “Our teams are trained to follow robust safety procedures when operating during warmer weather, and our policies meet or exceed industry standards and OSHA guidance,” he said.

Preventing future deaths in warehouses

It’s hard to draw broad conclusions from four deaths, said Eric Frumin, director of health and safety at the union-affiliated Strategic Organizing Center, adding that warehouse deaths are statistically rare throughout the industry.

Still, workplace safety experts say the deaths raise questions.

“One workplace fatality is too many,” said Marissa Baker, assistant professor at the University of Washington’s department of environmental and occupational health sciences.

These are also not the first fatalities Amazon has seen in the last 12 months. While it’s unclear exactly how many Amazon workers have died in the company’s warehouses over the years, five employees and a delivery driver employed by Amazon’s contractor died in a collapsed warehouse during a tornado in December.

While OSHA investigated the incident and required Amazon to review its severe weather policies, the deaths don’t appear in two OSHA datasets that collect information on fatalities. When asked by CNET, OSHA didn’t provide information for why the deaths weren’t recorded in its datasets. In a statement, Amazon said it reports all deaths to OSHA in accordance with the law.

In general, both fatalities and injuries are undercounted, Baker said. “It doesn’t mean that the data we do have should be ignored or can’t be relied on,” she said. But she added there needs to be more standardization in recording injuries and deaths at work. 

Frumin, the health and safety director at the Strategic Organizing Center, added that OSHA investigations must be thorough to create prevention plans for the future.

When looking into Boland’s death in Robbinsville, he said, investigators have to ask why someone fell off a three-foot ladder in the first place. Even if a similar fall doesn’t lead to someone’s death in the future, it could still cause serious injury. Regulators in the state of Washington have said Amazon workers often skip using tools like step stools, or use them unsafely, because they fear they’ll be penalized if they slow down enough to use them correctly.

For Mota Frias, who died of cardiac arrest on Prime Day, investigators will have to look at whether heat and the pace of work made his medical emergency worse.

Amazon has denied responsibility for his death. Company spokesman Stephenson said the death “was related to a personal medical condition.” Amazon workers told the Daily Beast that the area where Mota Frias worked was dangerously hot, but Stephenson said claims that heat was a factor are false. OSHA will also make a determination on the question, Stephenson said, adding, “we fully expect that it will reach the same conclusion.”

A heart attack on the job can be work-related, even if it stems from an underlying health condition, Frumin said. Additionally, he said, workers who fear losing their jobs will often work through health scares.

Frumin also believes it’s worth looking into the fact that the death happened on Prime Day, when advocates say increased production demands lead to higher injury rates. 

“That is a big alarm,” Frumin said.

Correction, 10:10 a.m. PT: Rafael Reynaldo Mota Frias died on July 13.

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Amazon is closing down its homegrown health care provider at the end of 2022, the company told employees Wednesday. Amazon Care offered telehealth appointments and home nurse visits as a workplace benefit to people around the US. 

The announcement comes as Amazon is poised to get more involved in health care, not less. In July, the company announced a deal to purchase One Medical, a primary care provider with brick-and-mortar clinics as well as telehealth offerings. The company also runs Amazon Pharmacy, which it created after acquiring PillPack in 2018.

Neil Lindsay, Amazon’s senior vice president of health services, told employees in an email that Amazon Care wasn’t going to succeed as a business, according to a copy of the email shared by Amazon. 

“Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting,” Lindsay said, adding it “wasn’t going to work long-term.”

Amazon Care started in 2019 as a benefit for the company’s workers and relied on a third-party company to dispatch health care workers to peoples’ homes and phones. Amazon then packaged it as a service other companies could offer their employees.

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The Amazon Labor Union is seeking a union election at a warehouse outside of Albany, New York. The union currently represents a group of workers in New York City after becoming the first to win a union election at a US Amazon warehouse in April. 

The National Labor Relations Board, which administers union elections, will next verify whether the union collected enough signatures to qualify for an election. Organizers have to show they have the support of at least 30% of workers in the proposed bargaining unit before moving on to a vote. 

“We are incredibly excited and proud of the brave and dedicated Amazon workers of ALB1 for collecting a showing of interest for an official union election,” the Amazon Labor Union said in a statement Tuesday.

“As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees,” Amazon spokesperson Paul Flaningan said in a statement. “Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work.”

The bargaining unit at the Albany-area warehouse, called ALB1, would include about 400 workers.

The petition comes as Amazon faces criticism over workplace safety from its workers and from federal regulators. A group of workers walked off the job at an Amazon air hub in San Bernardino, California, on Monday in protest of Amazon’s handling of high temperatures and other safety issues. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the US Department of Labor, is investigating multiple Amazon warehouses for safety concerns, as well as the deaths of workers at separate warehouses in New Jersey.

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Amazon posted mixed second-quarter results on Thursday as better-than-expected revenue was offset by an expense generated from the e-commerce giant’s investment in electric car maker Rivian. 

Net sales in the quarter, ended June 3, rose 7% to $121.2 billion, beating the $119.1 billion forecast by analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance. The company posted a loss of 20 cents per share, missing analyst expectations of a profit of 13 cents per share.

The loss was caused largely by Amazon’s investment in Rivian, which generated a $3.9 billion valuation loss. Operating income, which excludes Amazon’s stake in the carmaker, dropped to $3.3 billion but beat the high end of the company’s forecast. In April, Amazon forecast operating income could range from a loss of $1 billion to a profit of $3 billion.

The earnings report comes as Amazon struggles under the weight of its sprawling logistics business, which organizes the delivery of products from warehouses to consumer doorsteps. The e-commerce giant spent lavishly on the logistics operations during the pandemic to keep up with demand from consumers that were housebound during lockdowns. With health restrictions easing, consumers are buying less online as they head to stores, leaving the capacity unused.

Already the company has taken steps to address its sprawl. CEO Andy Jassy has shuttered some of Amazon’s physical stores. The company also raised prices for its Prime delivery service in both the US and Europe.

“We’re making progress on the more controllable costs we referenced last quarter, particularly improving the productivity of our fulfillment network,” Jassy said in a statement accompanying the report.

Amazon shares surged in after-hours trading, jumping almost 12% to $113.58.

In a call with reporters, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said consumer demand improved during the second quarter, a trend that appears to have continued into the third quarter. Members of its Prime delivery service bought more than 300 million items during Amazon’s Prime Day shopping event earlier this month, the company said. That translated to more than 100,000 items per minute over the two-day event.

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Amazon will acquire One Medical as part of its effort to expand into the health care business, the company said Thursday. One Medical runs a chain of more than 150 primary care clinics in over a dozen US cities and offers online and mobile services. Amazon will pay $18 a share for the company, putting the deal’s value at about $3.9 billion. 

The acquisition, which must be approved by regulators and One Medical shareholders before it’s final, will greatly expand the primary care services Amazon is already offering through its Amazon Care brand.

“We love inventing to make what should be easy easier and we want to be one of the companies that helps dramatically improve the healthcare experience over the next several years,” senior vice president of Amazon Health Services Neil Lindsay said in a statement. 

One Medical offers services to individual subscribers as well as workers who receive its benefits from employers. It aims to speed up access to care with round-the-clock virtual care for patients and quick appointment booking. Amazon Care currently provides medical care in eight cities, including the home of Amazon’s offices in both Seattle and Arlington, Virginia, and it’s slated to expand into New York, San Francisco and other major cities. 

Amazon’s “presence becomes much stronger as One Medical’s services reach nearly 800,000 members across 25 US markets,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Rajiv Leventhal, who added that the acquisition will make Amazon a close competitor of CVS Health and Walgreen’s efforts to expand into primary care. 

Currently, Amazon Care patients can receive in-home visits for flu and COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, preventive care, prescriptions and treatment for a range of conditions and book online appointments.

After launching Amazon Care in 2019, the company followed up in 2020 by launching its own online pharmacy. Amazon Pharmacy fulfills prescriptions for those with or without insurance, and delivers them to customers’ homes. Prime members receive special savings and free two-day shipping.

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An Amazon worker died at a New Jersey warehouse during the week of Prime Day, the e-commerce giant’s annual discount blitz, prompting an investigation by the US Department of Labor.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also opened a broader investigation into Amazon warehouse working conditions, according to the company. 

The cause of death for the New Jersey worker, who wasn’t identified, hasn’t been released. He died July 13, the first of two days when Prime Day deals were officially offered.

“We’re deeply saddened by the passing of one of our colleagues and offer our condolences to his family and friends during this difficult time,” Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson said. HuffPost reported the death on Monday. An OSHA spokesperson said the agency is aware of the death and has opened an investigation.

The broader OSHA investigation is into warehouses in the New York City; Chicago; and Orlando, Florida, areas. The agency is looking at allegations of unsafe working conditions tied to “Amazon’s required pace of work for its warehouse employees,” according to a statement given to ABC News, which reported the investigations earlier.

“OSHA received referrals from the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York regarding allegations of safety and health violations at several Amazon facilities,” an OSHA spokesperson said, who added that such referrals are routine.  

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the company will cooperate with the investigation, adding “we believe it will ultimately show that these concerns are unfounded.”

The investigations come as Amazon faces increasing scrutiny for high injury rates. Regulators have tied the rates directly to the company’s demanding pace of work, which Amazon enforces with surveillance of workers’ movements throughout their shifts. Worker advocacy groups have found injury rates that are about twice as high at Amazon warehouses than at non-Amazon warehouses, based on Amazon’s reports to OSHA. Amazon has said it prioritizes worker safety with new training programs and other investments. 

Workers have told CNET that they’ve faced delays and red tape in getting care and benefits after injuries at warehouses. Amazon said the workers’ experiences weren’t typical for its workforce.

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About a year ago, Ash Jones grabbed a small box from a conveyor belt at an Amazon warehouse in Hebron, Kentucky. He hasn’t been able to work since.

The package, which Jones estimated to be about 10 inches long, was deceptively heavy. As he turned to place it on a pallet, his wrist gave out. 

“I felt something pop,” said Jones, noting that the package had no label warning about its weight. He says his wrist later swelled to the size of an orange.

The injury was only the beginning of Jones’ problems. Initially on workers’ compensation, his benefits stopped after a few weeks because a doctor contracted by Amazon classified him as permanently disabled. After months without pay, Amazon said it couldn’t find a position that accommodated Jones’ disability. By that time, he had gotten a lawyer and a second opinion from a doctor who said the disability wasn’t permanent.

On the afternoon that CNET inquired about the details of Jones’ case, Amazon offered him a settlement for nearly a year of unpaid workers’ compensation. 

Jones isn’t alone in fighting Amazon for benefits after an on-the-job injury at one of the company’s more than 800 North American warehouses, where unrelenting schedules collide with complex bureaucracy. Workers, advocates and regulators attribute injuries to Amazon’s demanding productivity targets, often called “the rate,” which dictate down to the second how long each task should take. Evaluated by doctors paid for by Amazon, injured workers say they face a system that focuses on getting them back on the floor rather than helping them heal. They also describe a Byzantine HR system that requires constant communication to ensure their cases don’t fall through the cracks. 

Amazon’s warehouse workers are likely to put in long hours over the next week or so. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the e-commerce giant will hold its annual Prime Day shopping extravaganza. One of the company’s biggest shopping drivers, Prime Day will put already-taxed warehouse workers on a more frantic pace as they face an onslaught of orders and the demands of two-day shipping. 

Worker are sparring with Amazon for health care and time off as the company struggles to manage a sprawling warehousing and logistics business that grew rapidly during the pandemic. Amazon hired 300,000 people in its fulfillment services in 2021, with the company reporting near the end of that year that its global workforce added up to more than 1.6 million people. The company’s logistics operations, which include warehouses and air facilities, tripled in size. (Amazon is now dealing with a downturn in demand and a resulting excess of space.) 

The company’s large workforce comes with higher injury rates. Between 2018 and 2020, Amazon warehouses in Minnesota had injury rates more than twice as high as other warehouses in the state, according to the National Employment Law Project. Similarly, serious injuries at all US Amazon warehouses ran at twice the level of non-Amazon warehouses in 2021, according to the Strategic Organizing Center, a union-affiliated labor advocacy group that also found the company had nearly seven injuries per 100 workers, and a total of 38,000 reported injuries. 

Amazon doesn’t contest the numbers of its workplace injuries, which are based on the company’s own reports to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel has said the growth in injuries was related to the company’s growing workforce, adding that new hires are more likely to get injured.

“We take the health and safety of our team seriously and, while we aren’t perfect, we don’t believe these few anecdotes represent the experience of our more than a million front-line employees,” Nantel said of the workers CNET spoke to. “When a member of our team does have an issue, we work hard to help with their unique concerns, including issues with compensation, benefits, or accommodations.”

Workers’ compensation attorneys say claiming benefits is complicated because many injured workers aren’t aware they’re entitled to them from the beginning. Many injured workers wait months before seeking legal advice.

“Most people have no real grasp on what they’re entitled to or the claims process,” said Bryant Greening, a workers’ compensation attorney in Chicago who’s had clients with claims against Amazon.

Christopher Johnson, another workers’ compensation attorney in Illinois, said workers may be afraid to report injuries even if they know they could get compensation, because they fear retaliation and potentially losing their jobs.

“They’re willing to almost forgo a lot of the rights that they have,” Johnson said.

Why injuries are so prevalent at Amazon

CEO Andy Jassy has echoed the company’s claim that the surge in hiring over the past two years is to blame for the high rate of injuries. Speaking to investors in April, he added that Amazon’s internal analysis has found that the company’s injury rates are a little worse than average for the industry, though he indicated he wasn’t satisfied with that performance.

“I take no solace in being average,” Jassy said. “We want to be the best in the industry.”

Findings from regulators point to one practice that Amazon could change to improve safety: the demanding rate system.

A Washington state agency found Amazon often didn’t provide tools needed to perform tasks ergonomically. If there was a tool, like a step stool, the agency found “employees will often disregard it out of fear of reprimand for failing to meet administrative rate goals for slowing the pace of their work to use such a device.”

At the time, Amazon told The Seattle Times that it planned to appeal the citation.

When the rate system leads to injury, workers say they’re stuck in a maze of bureaucracy that causes delays.

Speaking through a Somali interpreter at a press conference in December, Minnesota Amazon worker Dad Ali blamed the rate requirements for injuries at his warehouse. Ali says he missed more than seven weeks’ pay after injuring spinal disks in July 2021, creating financial pain for his family. Amazon says Ali’s address was out of date in the company’s system, and he received the payments after he signed up for direct deposit.

Less than two months after his injury, Ali says he was back at work after a doctor that Amazon had referred him to found him fit. The company didn’t reduce his duties, even though Ali says he was still in pain. Amazon, he said, “will give you the runaround until you give up.”

Workers say they’re cut off from care

Plenty of Amazon workers who’ve consulted with Greening, the workers’ compensation attorney, end up having a smooth time getting workers’ compensation and medical care. But he says the process can go off the rails even after treatment is underway.

Caley Tibbittz, a former warehouse worker who isn’t working with Greening, damaged ligaments in his spinal cord after two hard falls at an Amazon Fresh facility in downtown Portland, Oregon. A few days after the first fall, he tried to power through a shift by bolstering himself with pain relievers. He ended up falling again. 

Unable to work, Tibbittz saw an urgent care doctor who contracts with Amazon. The doctor referred Tibbittz to physical therapy, where he made progress until he was forced to miss a few weeks of appointments because Amazon’s contracted care management provider delayed approving his sessions. The care manager later ended treatment altogether because a medical examination found Tibbittz was no longer improving.  

Pressed for money, Tibbittz started driving for DoorDash. He says he eventually gained more mobility as he bent, twisted and lifted in the course of his work. Still, he hasn’t fully recovered.

“I have pain all the time in my back,” Tibbittz said.

In response to Tibbittz’s concerns, Amazon told CNET he didn’t provide additional information it requested from him in order to grant an extension on his case.

The company says it’s still working with Jones, the Kentucky worker who injured his wrist. Last fall, as Jones waited to hear if Amazon would accommodate his disability, he began to get requests from different company representatives asking for paperwork from his doctor. Jones believed Amazon already had the papers on file, but he submitted them by email anyway because he feared the company would close his case if he didn’t. 

As the requests for the same paperwork continued, he says he set a reminder on his phone for 2:30 p.m. every day to send it in. After a month, the company stopped asking for the documents and confirmed they were in his file.

When Jones, the worker in Kentucky, asked for pain medication, he says, the doctor who treated him wouldn’t write a prescription because Jones couldn’t work a shift at Amazon while taking the medication. Medical records confirm the doctor didn’t prescribe Jones medication, but don’t say why.

Jones, who soon found the pain too great to continue with physical therapy, says the exchange surprised him. 

“Why do you care more about me going to work,” Jones said he thought at the time, “and less about my injury?”

The post Injured Amazon Warehouse Workers Get the Runaround Over Benefits and Care first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

What’s happening

Amazon is increasing investments aimed at keeping counterfeit products off its site, according to an annual report, part of its effort to protect consumers from fraudulent products and businesses from knock-offs.

Why it matters

E-commerce has made it easy for counterfeiters to sell sham goods to millions of people, defrauding consumers and legitimate businesses.

Amazon said it ramped up investments in 2021 to keep counterfeit products off its retail site and saw signs its efforts are working, according to an annual brand protection report it released Wednesday. 

The company spent more than $900 million on its anti-counterfeit programs and employed over 12,000 people focused on the problem in 2021. That’s up from $700 million and 10,000 people in the prior year. At the same time, Amazon said its automated systems detected and stopped fewer attempts from bad actors to set up stores on the site in 2021 and that one measure showed fewer brands on average flagged cases that turned out to involve counterfeits.

The increasing investment of money and manpower from Amazon is necessary, said Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of technology at Amazon. 

“That unfortunately speaks to the fact the problem of counterfeit isn’t going away,” Westmoreland said, adding, “it’s an industry-wide problem.”

Counterfeiting has plagued e-commerce for years. Online shopping makes it easy for customers to buy products from all over the world and for small businesses to find a global market, but it also makes it simple for counterfeiters to sell shams to millions of people. As the largest e-commerce platform in the US, Amazon has faced criticism from consumer protection advocates and business groups for exposing shoppers to potentially dangerous knockoffs and damaging businesses by providing a platform for fraudsters. 

In addition to hiring AI scientists tasked with quickly identifying fraudulent products and shady sellers, Amazon has responded by creating a brand registry that establishes a line of communication with the e-commerce giant and streamlines tools for reporting problems. It’s also created a system for brands to suppress listings that are believed to be counterfeits of their products.

Amazon has also sued sellers it alleges are selling counterfeit products, asking courts to order them to stop selling on Amazon. In April, Chinese authorities raided a warehouse containing counterfeit luxury goods after Amazon and fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo shared intelligence on the alleged operation.

US lawmakers have attempted to address counterfeits with legislation, and Amazon has endorsed the INFORM Act, as have Etsy and eBay. The bill would require e-commerce platforms to verify information about sellers on their sites. 

Amazon has implemented a version of seller verification, requiring in-person or on video sessions with sellers, who must provide identification documents in order to open up online stores that sell in the US, UK, the European Union, Canada and Japan.

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