Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, with millions of shoppers that favor its e-commerce platform over all others due to its wide range of product offerings, seamless user experience, and incredibly convenient delivery speed.
Although it's a successful business, workplace safety advocates and activists have long criticized Amazon's labor practices, which allegedly prioritizes efficiency over employees' safety to meet high consumer demands.
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This has led multiple Amazon employees from across the country to threaten strikes against the company to push for salary improvements, safer labor practices, and job security.
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However, Amazon is now facing backlash from the government, and the accusations could tarnish its reputation and potentially ruin its lucrative business.
HELP releases findings of a lengthy work safety investigation
On Sunday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee (HELP), led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, released the findings of an 18-month investigation concerning Amazon's workplace safety.
This investigation reviewed seven years of Amazon's worker injury data and interviewed over 130 Amazon employees.
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According to the committee, Amazon is sacrificing employees' safety for efficiency in warehouses and has gotten away with it by manipulating data to make it seem like the warehouses are safer than they actually are.
The findings showed that Amazon warehouses have higher injury rates than the industry average and other warehouses in the same sector, as employees are nearly two times more likely to suffer an injury. In 2023, Amazon recorded over 30% more injuries than the industry average.
These injuries are allegedly due to Amazon forcing employees to work extremely fast to fulfill impossible rate requirements set by the company, ignoring all safety protocols.
HELP claims that Amazon compares all its warehouses, despite the size, to the industry average exclusively for large warehouses with over 1,000 since those tend to have higher injury rates. This makes the company's rates appear much lower since most Amazon warehouses have fewer than 1,000 employees.
Additionally, the committee claims Amazon actively blames its employees for their injuries and refuses to refer workers to any outside medical care that's not an Amazon on-site medical care facility.
Amazon responds to HELP's detrimental findings
These findings and claims by HELP can be very detrimental to Amazon's business. However, Amazon refused to stand with its arms crossed amid these unfavorable claims that directly targeted its labor practices.
On Monday, Amazon rejected the alleged findings in HELP's investigation, claiming that with the surge in consumer demand, it has been improving its workplace safety.
"We’re proud of the progress we’ve made and our commitment to continuously improving, and we were eager to share that progress with the Committee," said Amazon in a statement.
Amazon also rejected the claim that it purposefully uses a more convenient methodology that benefits its injury rates.
According to Amazon's injury records, the company's employee injury rate decreased by 28% from 2019 to 2023, and injuries that require workers to take time off declined by 75%.
Additionally, Amazon argues that HELP's findings are incorrect since they use the wrong industry averages and outdated information, lacking context to feed its narrative.
"It’s now clear that this investigation wasn’t a fact-finding mission but rather an attempt to collect information and twist it to support a false narrative," said Amazon.
Amazon has been accused of unsafe labor practices by the government before
In July, a judge overturned four citations in the appeals court that accused Amazon (AMZN) of hazardous working conditions, ruling that the U.S. Department of Labor failed to prove that the company forced employees to work at a hazardous work pace.
In this case, it was revealed that from 2020 to 2022, Amazon launched three internal projects that allowed the company to study its employees' speed requirements and injury rates. The results showed a link between the two, but Amazon argued against each result, citing flaws and inaccuracies in their studies.
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However, this gave HELP more room to argue that Amazon was aware of the issue between speed and injury yet chose to reject and ignore recommendations.
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