The overall injury rate at Amazon warehouses declined in the past year, according to two new analyses of injury data.
The Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of labor unions that has focused on working conditions at Amazon, analyzed data the company submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for 2022. In a report released Wednesday, it found the overall injury rate at Amazon had decreased — from 7.9 injuries per 100 workers in 2021 to 7.0 injuries in 2022.
Amazon released its own safety report in March, mostly using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that showed a similar decline. Amazon reported that its injury rate at U.S. facilities fell from 7.6 injuries per 200,000 working hours in 2021 to 6.7 injuries in 2022.
While Amazon touts this statistic as evidence that it has made strides on founder Jeff Bezos’ 2020 commitment to become “Earth’s safest place to work,” the Strategic Organizing Center said the data overall shows Amazon has “failed to make meaningful progress on worker safety.”
“It’s long past time for Amazon’s executives and board of directors to come clean with workers, communities and investors about the safety crisis, and give them the full picture,” said Eric Frumin, the health and safety director at the Strategic Organizing Center. “And it’s time for Amazon to make the changes to its operations that will actually reduce the hazards – and finally stop this plague of serious injuries that threaten their workers every day.”
The Strategic Organizing Center analyzed injury data from 1,034 Amazon facilities with a workforce of 716,688 employees.
It found that there were 38,609 total recordable injuries at Amazon in 2022. Of those, 95% were considered serious, meaning the worker either had to take time off or switch job responsibilities while they recovered.
While the rate of injury declined in the past year, it did not dip to the same low levels Amazon recorded in 2020 when it temporarily slowed down the pace of work at its warehouses amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Amazon recorded 6.6 injuries per 100 workers, compared to 7.0 injures per 100 workers in 2022.
In this year’s analysis, the SOC maintained that workers at Amazon warehouses are still injured more frequently and more severely than workers at other non-Amazon warehouses.
In 2022, the serious injury rate at Amazon warehouses was 6.6 injuries per 100 workers. At other non-Amazon warehouses, that rate was 3.2. Amazon workers generally need 10 more workdays to recover from an injury than workers at other warehouses, the SOC found.
The group of labor unions also found that the rate of injuries resulting in time off work has declined from 2020 to 2022, while the rate of injuries that lead workers to switch job responsibilities has gone up. That could be part of a tactic to push workers to return to the warehouse floor before they’ve fully recovered, the Strategic Organizing Center alleged in its report. It found in a 2021 survey that 37% of workers who participated in the poll said management pressured them to return to work before they felt ready to do so.
In 2020, Amazon reported 2.64 injuries per 100 workers that resulted in time off work to recover. In 2021, that rate was 2.43. In 2022, it dipped to 1.68.
Comparatively, Amazon reported 3.31 injuries per 100 workers that resulted in “light duty,” or workers switching to a different job duties while recovering. In 2022, it rose to 4.89.
Amazon saw a similar change in its analysis, but it touted it as a success.
The company reported that it had reduced the number of injuries that required workers to take time away from work by 53% between 2019 and 2022, falling to 1.6 injuries per 200,000 working hours.
It credited the change to a new return-to-work program that finds “safe and appropriate” temporary placements for workers while they are recovering.
“We’ve made meaningful and measurable progress over the last four years — but there’s more to do,” Amazon wrote in its report.
Amazon noted that 55% of all recordable injuries were work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Also known as MSDs, musculoskeletal disorders can include strains, sprains and lower back injuries. They can be caused by repetitive motions, such as lifting, reaching and bending.
The other 45% of recorded injuries in 2022 were from falls and “occasional objects that came loose and fell,” Amazon said in its report.
In 2022, Amazon continued, the company lost three Amazon employees in the United States to “work-related fatalities.” Other workers, including some who helped with Amazon’s delivery and fulfillment network, “were also impacted by tragedy last year during fatal incidents,” Amazon wrote. In addition to its employees, Amazon works with independent contractors to keep packages moving through the warehouses and to customers’ doorsteps.
The company plans to invest $550 million in safety initiatives in 2023, adding to the $1 billion it committed to safety from 2019 to 2022. That $1 billion does not include COVID-19 related safety initiatives, Amazon said.
While the Strategic Organizing Center found Amazon’s injury rate was higher than the average at other warehouses, Amazon pushed back on that notion. It compares itself with two different industry groups: general warehousing and storage, as well as courier and express delivery services.
Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Amazon’s injury rate in 2021 — 7.6 injuries per 200,000 working hours — was higher than the average for the warehouse industry — 6.7 injuries per 200,000 working hours. But, in the delivery industry, Amazon’s injury rate was lower than the average: 8.5 injuries per 200,000 working hours compared to 9.7 injuries on average.
In both reports, Amazon and the Strategic Organizing Center accused other groups of distorting the data to fit a narrative. Amazon wrote it was sharing its safety practices to “help clarify misconceptions.” The SOC called out Amazon more specifically, writing that the company chose to “compare its injury rates against skewed, outdated and misleading industry averages.”
The group of labor unions has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Amazon for making what the SOC contends are false and misleading claims about its warehouses.
Meanwhile, state and federal safety regulators are investigating Amazon facilities after complaints from workers about safety conditions. Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries has cited and fined Amazon four times for safety violations at its warehouses in the state. OSHA has cited seven Amazon facilities around the country and issued nearly $122,800 in fines.
In one of those citations, OSHA said Amazon had failed to properly record work-related injuries at warehouses in five states.
Amazon has appealed all of the citations from Washington’s DOL and plans to appeal the citations from federal safety regulators.
The Department of Justice is investigating whether Amazon executives knew about the safety hazards at its warehouses and misled others about the company’s safety record.
Daniel Rivera, who works at Amazon’s San Bernardino, California, air hub, said at a press conference Thursday that the data he sees in Amazon’s safety report doesn’t match his experience as an employee.
Rivera said he’s suffered a wrist injury from the fast pace of work, and has raised concerns about excessive heat and lack of air circulation in the facility. When he asked management for fans recently, Rivera said he received a warning that he could lose his job.
In the community where he was born, raised and now works, Rivera said he wants “good jobs for the community and, more importantly, safety on the job. Knowing just going to work won’t lead to lifetime pain or serious injuries or death.”
“I know that’s something we should already expect from our employers, but at Amazon that isn’t my experience,” he added. “Safety is always something we’re fighting for.”
