Amazon warehouse staff and supply drivers are injured much more usually on the job than staff of opponents like Walmart and UPS, in keeping with a brand new examine.
In 2020, 5.9 out of each 100 Amazon warehouse staff had been victims of “critical accidents” that required them to both miss work or be positioned on mild obligation. By comparability, that determine was 2.6 for Amazon competitor Walmart and 4.0 for warehouse staff total, in keeping with the report by the Strategic Organizing Middle.
In complete, staff on the Jeff Bezos-run firm logged greater than 27,000 accidents final 12 months, in keeping with the report, which used OSHA knowledge.
“Amazon’s obsession with pace has come at an enormous price to its staff,” wrote the Strategic Organizing Middle, which is a coalition of enormous labor unions together with the Service Workers Worldwide Union and the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters. “It’s time to carry Amazon accountable for the damaging working circumstances it has created and continues to disregard.”
Amazon staff have spoken up about office harm charges for years. In 2019, over 100 Staten Island Amazon warehouse staff protested the corporate’s office circumstances, accusing Amazon of treating office security as a “secondary concern.” Harm charges had been additionally a key difficulty for organizers of the failed 2021 union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
And it’s not simply Amazon’s warehouse staff who’re injured abnormally incessantly. Final 12 months, 9.7 out of each 100 “final mile” supply drivers for Amazon had been significantly injured on the job, in comparison with 6.5 out of 100 for comparable staff at logistics competitor UPS.
Beneath tight deadlines and quotas, some Amazon supply drivers have taken to urinating in bottles inside their autos.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel didn’t dispute the report’s conclusions however stated that the corporate was taking steps to scale back employee accidents.
“Whereas any incident is one too many, we’re repeatedly studying and seeing enhancements via ergonomics packages, guided workout routines at staff’ workstations, mechanical help gear, workstation setup and design, and forklift telematics and guardrails,” she instructed the Publish.
The report comes after Amazon reported a file $8.1 billion revenue through the first three months of 2021, buoyed by on-line procuring through the pandemic.
Additionally on Tuesday, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Publish revealed a separate evaluation of Amazon OSHA experiences, additionally discovering a price of 5.9 critical accidents per 100 warehouse staff.
