On one Prime Day, Amazon warehouse workers endured '45% injury rate'

Bernie Sanders puts e-souk titan on blast for workplace harm

Risk of workplace injury is extremely high for Amazon warehouse workers during Prime Day rushes and the demanding holiday season, according to a US Senate committee report.

Authored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the investigative report [PDF] claimed Amazon's annual Prime Day sale is "a major cause of injuries for the warehouse workers who make it possible."

The HELP committee, led by Sanders, has not yet completed its probe into the online super-souk, which began last year, but revealed some of its findings so far, with the publication likely timed to coincide with Amazon Prime Day 2024.

The panel's interim report is mainly focused on data from Prime Day 2019, and claimed that Amazon reported an injury rate of about ten percent – 10 workers injured per 100 – to the nation's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which would be double the industry average. However, the committee said this figure only covers the injuries Amazon was obligated to report to OSHA, and claimed the overall injury rate was roughly 45 percent, or 45 per 100. The injury rate was similar for the holiday season, the report said, and claimed this was based on internal Amazon data.

The study said the data showed that Amazon's overall injury rate was above 30 percent for nearly every single week of 2019. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when this data was compiled, Amazon's injury rate hovered between 15 and 25 percent, it added.

The report implied the injury rate is as high as it is due to Amazon's alleged prioritization of profit over workplace safety. The committee said it had viewed internal Amazon discussions about understaffing it claimed showed how a shortage of workers increases the risk of injury to everyone else, "endangering workers who have to manage increased volume without increased support."

The Senate study added:

... the company continues to create excessive demand and push workers to extremes to meet that demand — often in ways that require workers to operate far beyond what is reasonable or safe. This is not an acceptable set of practices from one of the richest companies in the world. Amazon must address its injury crisis and ensure that all workers are safe at their jobs, especially during the most intense and demanding periods.

The committee also made the distinction between what it termed "Amazon's rate of recordable injuries – the injuries Amazon is required to disclose to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)" and its "total injury rate," which the report said the internet goliath was "not required to disclose to OSHA." The report stated the first figure was more than 10 injuries per 100 workers and the second was "just under 45 injuries per 100 workers. That is nearly half of the company's warehouse workers."

Not all injuries have to be disclosed to the workplace safety regulator, such as those that only require first aid. Injuries that need more than a band aid have to be declared.

Amazon told The Reg in response:

The claims that we systemically underreport injuries, and that our actual injury rates are higher than publicly reported, are false. We're required to report every injury that needs more than basic first aid, and that's what we do. While any company might make an occasional clerical error, after a nearly six-month investigation that gave OSHA access to all of our internal injury and incident report notes, and closed-door interviews with our associates, OSHA found no intentional, willful, or systemic errors in our reporting.

The workplace safety watchdog, meanwhile, according to page 5 of the report, told Amazon in January that "workers cannot truly receive 'first' aid for the same acute injury on the 10th, 20th, or 30th visit."

Amazon added to The Reg: "Since 2019, we've made significant progress — reducing our recordable incident rate (which includes anything that requires more than basic first aid) in the US by 28 percent, and our lost time incident rate (which only includes more significant injuries that require an employee to miss at least one day of work) by 75 percent."

The e-tail giant claimed the Senate committee report "ignores our progress and paints a one-sided, false narrative," and denied it was not adequately staffed for busy shopping periods. "This is just not true, as we carefully plan and staff up for major events, ensure that we have excess capacity across our network, and design our network so that orders are automatically routed to sites that can handle unexpected spikes in volume," said Amazon's representatives. ®