many years, Amazon Warehouse staff complain of unsafe working conditions and the risk of injury they face to rush packages and deliver them to customers within two days.
Amazon claims injury rates are down Facility level data released last month by the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration Highlighting workers’ concerns, it shows that in 2022, 6.9 out of 100 Amazon workers were injured. In January, OSHA investigators cited Amazon for its “failure to keep workers safe.”
Last year’s industry-wide figures won’t be released until November, but OSHA chief Doug Parker said Amazon’s injury rate has a history of being much higher than others in the warehouse sector. . In 2021, Amazon’s injury rate will be nearly 1.5 times the industry average. Some locations in Amazon’s warehouses had 12 workers in 100, Parker said.
“Each year, more than 10% of workers suffer serious injuries that require them to miss work,” Parker said of these warehouses. “We know it’s affecting thousands of workers, and it’s very worrying.”
Bobby Gosvenor is one former worker living with pain.
Until 2020, Gosvener worked at Amazon’s warehouse in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He said he was left with a herniated disc that required neck surgery in December after his belt failed. He is now permanently partially disabled.
“I’m going to have to carry this injury with me for the rest of my life,” Gosvenor said. I think of
Jennifer Crane is working through the pain at an Amazon warehouse in St. Peters, Missouri, after injuring her wrist in October. She said she tore her ligaments from “packing cases of sparkling water repeatedly all day, along with dog food and Gatorade.”She wears the brace to get through the day.
“I’m on pain meds after a couple of hours of heavy lifting,” Crane said.
she needs that job. Crane became a single mother to her seven sons when her husband died of a heart attack in 2019.
“I have to be able to support them. I have bills to pay,” she said. Crane, she said, knows she can look for other work.
Jennifer Crane, an Amazon employee, at her home outside St. Louis, Missouri, 2022.
Missouri Workers Center
Crane is circulating a petition in the warehouse calling for slower pace of work, more breaks, ergonomic changes and equipment updates.
In response to these reports of injuries and pain, Amazon spokeswoman Maureen Lynch Vogel said in a statement: is false. “
Amazon’s self-reported injury rate dropped 9% between 2021 and 2022. Beyond warehouses, the e-commerce giant says its injury rate across all its operations worldwide, around 1.5 million employees, has dropped nearly 24% from 2019 to 2022. .
OSHA’s Parker said, “I don’t dispute that their injury rate may have declined somewhat over time, but that’s not enough.
An analysis of new data from OSHA by the Center for Strategic Organizations (SOC), a union coalition, found that Amazon’s injury rate in 2022 will be more than double that of all non-Amazon warehouses. reportIn 2022, Amazon employed 36% of US warehouse workers, but was responsible for more than 53% of all serious injuries in the industry.
Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said in an email that the group’s findings “illustrate an inaccurate picture.”
“The safety and health of our employees is always our number one priority, and claims otherwise are inaccurate,” Nantel said. “We are proud of the progress our team has made and will continue to work hard together to keep improving every day.”
“Amazon’s obvious attitude to this is to deny there is a problem,” said SOC health and safety officer Eric Frumin.
federal scrutiny
Federal authorities are currently investigating the health and safety issue and last summer inspected seven Amazon warehouses in five states. OSHA-issued Quote 7 locations.
“At every facility, we found serious hazards that put workers at serious risk of physical harm,” Parker said. “The biggest concern is scale. We have good reason to believe that the types of processes we found unsafe at these facilities are the processes used at Amazon facilities across the country.”
OSHA also responded to an inquiry from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where OSHA identified similar risks in its own facility investigation. The Washington State Department of Labor said he also listed two warehouses as safety violations. OSHA also cited Amazon as follows: 14 record keeping violationsfound that the company did not properly report worker injuries and illnesses.
Amazon appeals all citations. If they are upheld, the company will have to pay a first-ever federal fine for a worker’s musculoskeletal injury. A Washington State Department of Justice fine adds him an additional $81,000.
Amazon has a market capitalization of about $1 trillion and last year generated over $500 billion in revenue.
“There is no amount of punishment that the Labor Department can impose that would make a difference to a company that makes billions of dollars a day,” Frumin said. “What matters is whether they respect the need to keep employees safe.”
In the rare case of federal cooperation, the Department of Justice also check out amazonask if the companyinvolved in a fraudulent plan According to a January press release, the DOJ’s civil affairs division is investigating whether Amazon executives made “false statements” to lenders about their security records to gain credit.
In a statement, Amazon told CNBC: The company said it would expand the team responsible for record keeping.
“If you rush, you will make mistakes”
For Daniel Olayiwola, who has worked at Amazon since 2017, the main concern is the pressure to work quickly.
“We have to make sure these rates are met,” said Olayiwola. “If you don’t, your valuation will go up. Then you won’t get any chance to change positions or move up.”
Introduced by Oraiwalla suggestion At its annual shareholder meeting last year, it asked Amazon to stop tracking workers’ labor rates and so-called “vacation tasks.” Countermeasure failed.
“This is a major contributor to the number of injuries in the Amazon worldwide,” said Olayiwola. “It’s very clear. If you rush, you’ll make mistakes and someone will get hurt.”
Amazon employee Daniel Olayiwola poses outside a warehouse in San Antonio, Texas on March 9, 2023.
Lucas Marikin
Olayiwola drives a forklift to pick up heavy goods at a warehouse in San Antonio, Texas. He said the slowest rate allowed at the facility was about 22 per hour, which “means you have to pick an item every three minutes.”
“It’s crazy if the item is a mirror, a dresser, a bed frame,” said Olaiwala. “But you have to keep picking these items and dropping them into these designated drop zones.”
An Amazon spokesperson said in an email that “pace of work” was not mentioned in any of the OSHA citations.But a survey of his six warehouses in the Southern New York area pace of work quoted as a problem. and three states— new york, Californiaand Washington — passed a law that seeks to reduce the use of productivity quotas in Amazon’s warehouses.
In the meantime, Olayiwola has sought help from retail worker advocacy group United for Respect, podcast It’s called “Surviving Scamazon”. Like Crane, he wants to support his family while working to create change from the inside out.His wife is pregnant with his second child and he wants to give up his job at Amazon. I call it a “necessary evil”.
Similar investigations are currently underway at 10 other Amazon sites, and dozens more are pending broader investigations, according to OSHA.
Watch the video to learn more.
