In his first letter as CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy maintained that when it comes to worker safety, Amazon is simply average.
"Our injury rates are sometimes misunderstood," he wrote. Amazon is "about average relative to peers, but we don't seek to be average. We want to be best in class."
Earlier this week, a report from a coalition of labor unions — the Strategic Organizing Center — analyzed data Amazon has submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and found that in 2021 the rate of injury at Amazon warehouses went up about 20%. Compared to other warehouse workers, Amazon employees needed about 19 more days to recover from injury.
The serious injury rate at Amazon warehouses in 2021 was 6.8 per 100 workers, compared to a rate of 3.3 per 100 at other non-Amazon warehouses, the SOC report found.
In his letter Thursday, Jassy said Amazon actually splits its workforce into two categories when comparing itself to other industry leaders: its warehouse workers and its courier and delivery service.
Amazons' injury rate was higher than its warehouse peers — 6.4 versus 5.5 — but lower than its courier and delivery peers — 7.6 versus 9.1.
Thinking of it that way, Amazon is about average, Jassy wrote.
"When I first started in my new role, I spent significant time in our fulfillment centers and with our safety team and hoped there might be a silver bullet that could change the numbers quickly," Jassy wrote. "I didn't find that."
Instead, he continued, Amazon has invested in rotational programs that help employees avoid spending too much time doing the same repetitive motions, as well as wearables that prompt employees when they're moving in a dangerous way, improved shoes to provide better toe protection and training programs on body mechanics and safety practices.
"We've been dissecting every process path to discern how we can further improve," he said. "But, we still have a ways to go, and we'll approach it like we do other customer experiences — we'll keep learning, inventing and iterating until we have more transformational results.
"We won't be satisfied until we do."
Jassy said Amazon created a list of 100 "pain points" for employees and is committed to systematically solving them.
Debbie Berkowitz, a former senior OSHA official and a fellow at Georgetown University, said Amazon's decision to share separate injury rates for warehouse workers and drivers is "disingenuous."
Because some of Amazon's facilities have such a high injury rate, including its warehouse in DuPont, they push up the nationwide rate for warehouse workers, making it appear that Amazon's rates are closer to those of its competitors than they actually are, Berkowitz said. And many injured Amazon drivers wouldn't be counted in the lower-than-average injury rate touted by the company because they are employed through independent delivery companies, part of Amazon's delivery service partner program.
This isn't the first time Amazon has made sweeping pledges to improve workers' experiences at its facilities. In his last letter to shareholders as CEO of Amazon last April, Jeff Bezos committed the company to becoming "Earth's Best Employer" and "Earth's Safest Place to Work."
It planned to invest in workers with wages, benefits and upskilling opportunities — or training and retraining efforts to help employees work with new technologies. Amazon committed to investing more than $300 million in safety projects and using algorithms to rotate employees among jobs in order to reduce repetitive motions.
"I'm excited to work alongside the large team of passionate people we have ... and help invent in this arena," Bezos wrote. "On the details, we at Amazon are always flexible, but on matters of vision we are stubborn and relentless."
Since then, Washington state workplace regulators have cited Amazon four times for violating safety laws and drawn a connection between Amazon's pace of work and its injury rate.
Eric Frumin, health and safety director with the Strategic Organizing Center, said Jassy could find the "silver bullet" he is looking for to make an immediate impact on worker injury rates: slow down, and stop disciplining, and in some cases firing, workers who don't keep up with the pace Amazon has set.
"What's stopping Andy Jassy from doing the obvious thing?" he said.
Jassy's letter appeared deliberately misleading, Frumin said, indicating that "it's going to be a long time before his workers get any relief."
The letter to shareholders comes at the same time employees across the country are calling to attention to working conditions at Amazon facilities.
Delivery companies that partner with Amazon to drop-off packages on doorsteps have sued the company, in part for setting unsafe expectations for drivers. Warehouse workers in New York voted to form the first union at an Amazon facility in the U.S., aiming to bargain for better working conditions and higher pay, while employees at other facilities may be gearing up to follow their path.
In Congress, the House Oversight Committee wrote to Jassy in March asking for information about Amazon's labor practices during severe weather events, following a tornado in Edwardsville, Illinois, that left six Amazon workers dead. Supervisors reportedly threatened employees and contractors would lose their job if they left the facility.
At the same time, lawmakers are increasingly paying attention to Amazon's business model, investigating whether it is engaging in anti-competitive practices. Also in March, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, and other members of the Judiciary Committee accused Amazon of lying to Congress during an investigation into the company's e-commerce platform.
In his letter to shareholders, Jassy writes he is proud of Amazon's extensive reach and how that breadth of business helped people during the pandemic, whether to access food, clothing and personal protective equipment, or for the tech expertise to keep their websites running and digital data safely stored.
Revenue from Amazon Web Services grew 37% year over year in 2021 while revenue from consumer goods grew 43% in the first quarter of that year, he said Thursday.
In 2004, Amazon had seven fulfillment centers in the U.S. In 2021, it had 253 centers, 110 sortation centers and 467 delivery stations.
In the early 2000s, it took an average of 18 hours to move an item through an Amazon fulfillment center. Now, it takes about two.
And, a $100 billion capital investment let the company grow its delivery network to 260,000 drivers worldwide and its Air cargo fleet to 100 aircraft.
"We realized the equivalent of three years' forecasted growth in about 15 months," Jassy wrote.
Now, he continued later in the letter, "we have more invention in front of us in the next 15 years than the last 15."
