Amazon’s ‘Dangerous and Illegal’ Warehouse Conditions Under Senate Investigation
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Workplace safety concerns at Amazon’s warehouses have now gotten the attention of one of the company’s most famous critics: Senator Bernie Sanders.
The Vermont Independent, who chairs the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), is launching an investigation into “dangerous and illegal” conditions at Amazon warehouses, according to 10-page letter the former presidential candidate issued to the Seattle company’s CEO Andy Jassy on Tuesday.
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“If Amazon can afford to spend $6 billion on stock buybacks last year, it can afford to make sure that its warehouses are safe places to work,” Sanders wrote. “If Amazon can afford to pay you [Jassy] $289 million in total compensation over the past two years, it can afford to treat all of its workers with dignity and respect, not contempt.”
Sanders cited data that Amazon reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), noting the company’s rate of 6.6 serious injuries per 100 workers. This total is more than double the rate of all non-Amazon warehouses, which tally 3.2 serious injuries per 100 workers.
The legislator called on Amazon to explain its higher injury and turnover rates compared to non-Amazon warehouses, and fork over data on its Amcare on-site medical clinics from 2019 to 2023, which he blasted for “abysmal” care.
Sanders also asked for data on how much it costs to implement safety measures across vacuum lifts, spring-platform carts, powered cart tuggers and more—as well as all communications related to the consideration or deployment of the safety measures since 2018.
The longtime political firebrand also asked Jassy to state whether Amazon has, internally or through a third party, examined “the connection between the pace of work of its warehouse workers and the prevalence or cost of injuries at its warehouses.”
Sanders said Jassy has until July 5 to respond to the inquiry.
An Amazon rep said the company has a different opinion of Sanders’ findings.
“We’ve reviewed the letter and strongly disagree with Senator Sanders’ assertions,” said Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly, adding that the company has an open invitation for Sanders to tour one of its facilities.
The e-commerce giant has faced considerable criticism of its labor safety violations in recent years. Last month, a second warehouse employee this year died on the job in an incident that Amazon described at the time as a non-work-related medical event. So far this year OSHA’s federal branch has issued four citations across seven Amazon facilities for ignoring safety hazards.
One such coalition of labor unions, the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), has repeatedly taken the company to task in reports that compile the data Amazon submits to OSHA.
But Amazon has disputed the SOC’s interpretation of the OSHA data, pointing to the reality that there’s no regulatory metric measuring the “serious injury rate.”
“We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously,” Kelly told Sourcing Journal. “There will always be ways to improve, but we’re proud of the progress we’ve made which includes a 23 percent reduction in recordable injuries across our U.S. operations since 2019. We’ve invested more than $1 billion into safety initiatives, projects, and programs in the last four years, and we’ll continue investing and inventing in this area because nothing is more important than our employees’ safety.”
Workers are also speaking up about their experiences.
“Most of the injuries in my job come from the speed of work that we are pushed to keep up with,” said Khali Jama, an Amazon worker from St. Paul, Missouri, organizing with the Awood Center as one of the 50-plus groups forming the Athena Coalition. “The problem is severe in my state: there is one injury on the job for every 9 Amazon warehouse workers every year; twice the rate of injury at non-Amazon Minnesota warehouses in Minnesota, and more than four times the rate at private industries.”
Jama said Amazon’s culture of “fear and surveillance” is responsible for the higher-than-average injury rates. “If you are not keeping up with their unreasonable standards of speed, a manager will come talk to you and tell you to speed up. If you are still not able to keep up for a second, or a third time, you will get fired through an app on your phone,” Jama added. “No one tells you that you have been fired. You find out because you come to work, and you can’t get into the building because you have already been fired because your ‘rate’ of work, or speed, was too low. This cycle of surveillance, management, and injury must end now.”
Labor expert, Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), similarly spoke out against Amazon when Sanders’ letter went public.
“Amazon has all the tools needed to protect workers, and it actively chooses not to use them. The company’s obsession with speed, enforced through a combination of intensive electronic surveillance and frequent discipline, leads directly to the high rates of serious injury at Amazon warehouses,” Dixon said in a statement. “Workers describe how Amazon’s system creates a climate of fear in which they must push their bodies to the brink and beyond—or risk losing their jobs. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
The HELP committee is seeking testimonials from current and former Amazon employees about their experiences at the company.
Sanders isn’t the only former presidential candidate who has railed against Amazon over its business practices. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), also an outspoken critic against Big Tech firms, previously called on Congress to break up Amazon in the wake of a Reuters report in 2021 that detailed the tech titan’s skirting of Indian e-commerce regulations.
