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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Amazon is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. It ships millions of packages around the corner, around the state, around the nation and around the world at speeds that are almost too fast to comprehend. Behind that massive shipping operation are millions of people working in huge fulfillment centers, moving packages and pallets to where they need to be. Earlier this month, one of those workers collapsed and died at the Amazon warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon. Today on the show, you'll hear from a reporter about this tragic incident and how Amazon has a less than stellar safety reputation. Then in the second part of the show, you'll hear about a new cancer center opening in Central Oregon. Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch. Amanda, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
Amanda Silberling: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Dunne: You wrote an article about an employee who died at an Amazon warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon. Generally, tell us about your article and what you found out.
Silberling: I found out about this story because I saw people talking about it on Reddit forums for Amazon fulfillment center workers. Then The Western Edge, which is an independent outlet in the Pacific Northwest, had written about it and interviewed employees about their experiences witnessing somebody die on the job. To a certain extent, the argument Amazon would make, I think, is that when you have thousands upon thousands of workers all over the country, things are bound to happen. But people have an especially low tolerance for these sorts of things happening at Amazon, because this isn't the first time we've seen this. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is more difficult. Amazon fulfillment centers are notoriously really difficult jobs. I consider myself to be relatively in shape, and I think that job would wear me down. But this is something that people have to do to make ends meet. It's a really common job, and it's physically demanding. This person collapsed on the floor. Oregon OSHA said it was not related to the working conditions, but the fact of the matter is that he did collapse at work and die. That has caused a lot of unrest among the employees at this fulfillment center. People are obviously upset. When you go to work, the last thing you want is to see one of your coworkers die.
Dunne: In your reporting, I think some employees, through various channels communicating outside of what happened, talked about the fact that they were almost advised to sort of work around the deceased person.
Silberling: Yeah. I think this is one of those situations where I wonder if maybe the managers here didn't know what to do. Maybe they were worried that if they told their employees to stop working, they wouldn't meet their metrics and would get in trouble. When you remove humanity from a workplace to that degree, even during a crisis, both the workers and management are still thinking about how it's going to affect their daily goals. How many packages am I supposed to scan? That's the environment they're working in, and that's what it takes, I guess, to have packages delivered extremely quickly. But at the same time, is the cost of Amazon's convenience that people are working these jobs where someone literally dies and they're still thinking about scanning packages and hitting their numbers?
Dunne: What has Amazon said about the incident?
Silberling: They've said they're sorry it happened and they have condolences for the person's family, but they aren't necessarily taking accountability. They're referring to the fact that OSHA did not consider this a work-related incident, and Amazon mostly has been doing damage control. As a reporter, this gets into tricky territory. You're being told two very different things from Amazon and from the people who work at these warehouses. Amazon wants to make themselves look like they're doing the right thing, and the workers are upset about what they're experiencing. Amazon denied reports circulating on social media that the warehouse was really hot, and that sound curtains installed there had made temperatures worse. That was one speculation about why this person may have had a cardiac event. Amazon has denied that's the case and said temperatures actually decreased after installing the sound curtains. You're hearing different things from both sides, and we have to be careful about how we navigate that. But the fact of the matter is that somebody went to work at the Amazon fulfillment center and didn't come home.
Dunne: I believe it's known as PDX9, and as I understand it, this facility has a history of unhealthy or unsafe practices. Can you talk about that?
Silberling: Amazon in general, compared to overall warehouse industry rates of injuries, has reported serious injuries at twice the rate, according to 2024 OSHA data. Specifically at PDX9, an investigation in 2018 from Reveal found that 26% of employees at the warehouse had sustained injuries, which is well above the industry average. We're talking about 2026 now, and this is 2018 data. Amazon says this OSHA data is being cherry-picked and doesn't represent the whole situation, but numbers are numbers to an extent. There is a history that shows PDX9 has had particularly harsh working conditions at a company that overall has particularly harsh working conditions.
Dunne: Is it well-known among observers of the tech industry that Amazon fulfillment centers are some of the harshest working environments in this landscape?
Silberling: Yeah. I feel like every couple of years there's some investigation into Amazon warehouses. There are currently ongoing investigations being conducted by the U.S. government. There has also been some really strong investigative reporting by journalists who have gone and worked in these warehouses. Journalist Emily Guendelsberger has a book called "On the Clock," part of which covers the experience of working at an Amazon fulfillment center. What she writes has stuck with me for years. I read the book before I even reported on tech. When you hear what the conditions are like and how efficiency-driven everything is, how you really are treated as a cog in a machine, it puts things in perspective. Sometimes people feel like cogs in a machine working desk jobs, but in an Amazon fulfillment center, you literally are a person in the machine. What you often see in online forums where fulfillment center workers talk among one another is that they feel if they aren't physically fit or healthy enough to do the job, they can easily be replaced.
Dunne: It's a tragic story and very interesting as well. Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch. Really appreciate your reporting on this. Thanks for joining us.
Silberling: Yeah. Thank you.
Dunne: St. Charles Medical Center is the largest medical facility in Central Oregon, and it's now getting bigger. You'll hear about how they're opening a brand-new cancer facility in that community. Mari Shay is the service line administrator for cancer services at St. Charles. Mari, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
Mari Shay: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Dunne: You made a big announcement about this new cancer center in Central Oregon. Tell us about it. Give us an overview of the size of the building and what's going to happen there.
Shay: We're really excited to announce that we will be opening our brand-new cancer center in Redmond on April 20. To put this in perspective, we have an existing, very small Redmond Cancer Center. Currently, it just has medical oncology and infusion. The new building is about nine times the size of that one, at 53,000 square feet. We're located right next door to the Redmond hospital, and this will be a fully comprehensive cancer center. That means we'll be able to offer all treatments at this one location, so there's no longer a need to go back and forth between Bend and Redmond. We'll have medical oncology, a 5,000-square-foot infusion center, and radiation oncology, which is a brand-new service to this area. There's currently only one radiation oncology location in all of Central Oregon, and that's our Bend location. This will be a huge addition. Along with that, we have specialty oncology surgeons, a high-risk program, and genetics services. And what's even more important is we now have all the support services in Redmond. Patients can attend a support group or an educational class, see a social worker or dietitian, and meet with visiting specialists, all in Redmond.
Dunne: For our audience, which is mostly west of the Cascades, talk about the issue of distance in Central Oregon. You mentioned not having to go to Bend. Talk about the importance of that.
Shay: Central Oregon is very broad. We have a very large service area. Because of the limited access to oncology services over here, we pull patients from as far as Eastern Oregon, into Idaho, and north and south. Sometimes patients even come over the mountains to see us. Statistically, we know at least 40% of the patients we serve live in Redmond or to the north, including Warm Springs, Prineville and Madras. We serve patients in Burns, John Day and Lakeview, some of whom travel several hours each way every time they need to come in. If anyone has been through treatment or knows anything about it, there are numerous visits. If you're getting daily radiation, that's five days a week. You're traveling up to two hours each way for about six weeks. We also sometimes have really difficult weather to travel through. Distance is a real barrier for our patients in Central Oregon. So even saving them 25 or 30 minutes each way is really impactful for someone coming in every day.
Dunne: Give our audience a sense of how long this has been in the works.
Shay: The original approval was back in 2018, prior to my time at St. Charles. They acknowledged there was a need to expand into Redmond to serve our patients. Then, of course, we all know what happened shortly after. I joined in the post-COVID era in 2020, and that's when we really brought it back. We said, let's get back on this mission of building a comprehensive cancer center in Redmond. We started the actual planning about three years ago, and the building has been under construction for just under two years.
Dunne: In addition to the cutting-edge cancer treatment technologies, talk about some of the amenities for families and non-patients. Obviously, a lot of times cancer patients' families go with them. What's available for people who aren't the patient but are going to be part of this process anyway?
Shay: When we designed this building, we knew that patients often have support systems, friends and family who come with them and are here for a long time. You could be here all day sometimes. So when we designed the building, we asked: if you were going to be sitting here all day waiting for your loved one, what would you need? You have the option of sitting in the infusion center, but we also constructed the first and second floor lobbies with a variety of seating. We've got cafe-style seating with tables for someone who wants to have a cup of coffee and get on a laptop, and conversational seating as well. We really looked at different types of seating that made visitors feel comfortable and created a warm, welcoming environment so they didn't feel like they were sitting in a cancer center. We have plants, natural woodwork, timber and a ton of natural lighting, which is a real blessing for this building. Natural light helps everybody. We're right next door to the Redmond hospital and within walking distance of several other clinics. We have ample parking right at the front door, and we even have EV charging stations for patients who need that while they're here.
Dunne: How many patients can this new center accommodate?
Shay: When we're at full capacity, we could easily see 300 or more patients a day, across all of the services we'll be offering here. We currently see about that many combined between our small Redmond facility and our Bend location. So between those two clinics, we can now offer that same capacity in one cancer center. When we built this building, we said space is a valuable commodity. We need to build a building that suits our needs today but will last us the next 5, 10 or 15 years. That's what we've done. We've built a building that we will continue to grow into as community need grows.
Dunne: I understand you have an event to invite the public to see this new facility. Tell us about it.
Shay: On Thursday, April 16, from 4 to 6 p.m., we are having an official ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of the new Redmond Cancer Center. It is open to the public. We invite everyone from the community. We'll have a brief ceremony and ribbon cutting, then open the building for tours. A lot of the team that works at the cancer center will be available to answer questions. You can actually get in and see a lot of the technology you normally wouldn't have access to unless you're a patient. It's really exciting, and we'd love to have as much of the community as possible come out and join us.
Dunne: Very exciting. She's Mari Shay, the service line administrator for cancer services at St. Charles. Mari, really appreciate you coming on and talking about the new cancer center.
Shay: Thank you so much for having me.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll hear about Oregon's continuing problem with absenteeism at schools, and you'll also hear how Boise is in a bit of a fight with Idaho's deep-red legislature about pride flags being displayed in public spaces around Boise. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
