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Amazon pushes its U.S. warehouse workers to fulfill orders at speeds that could lead to high injury rates, even though they are aware of the risks, according to an investigation led by Senator Bernie Sanders.
The findings, from an 18-month investigation into the company, confirm claims that workers and union activists have made about the company for years.
The report accuses the company of rejecting changes that would have reduced worker pace but improved safety because of concerns about its bottom line.
But Amazon said the report was “factually incorrect” and contained “selective and outdated information that lacks context and is not based in reality.”
“This investigation was not a fact-finding mission, but rather an attempt to collect information and distort it to support a false narrative,” the company said.
Amazon, which employs about 800,000 people in the United States, has been accused of unsafe conditions in its warehouses for years.
These concerns intensified during the Covid pandemic, when e-commerce boomed, leading to protests from its workers around the world.
Amid the controversy, founder Jeff Bezos said the company needed to do better by its employees.
Senator Sanders, known for his pro-worker stances, launched an investigation into Amazon's practices in June 2023. Senate members conducted 135 interviews and reviewed more than 1,000 documents.
Their analysis of public records found that Amazon-operated warehouses experienced more than 30% more injuries than the warehousing industry average in 2023.
Amazon workers were also nearly twice as likely to be injured as people working in warehouses operated by other companies in each of the past seven years, according to the report approved by the committee's Democratic members. Senate of Health, Education and Labor. and pensions.
Amazon had internally examined the links between workplace speed and accident rates, including in a study called Project Soteria, according to the investigation.
But the report said the company chose not to adopt recommended changes, which included giving workers more time off and stopping disciplinary action against people who failed to comply with workplace requirements. working speed.
Investigators also accused Amazon of trying to “manipulate” data to mislead the public about its safety record.
Amazon said it was fair for the company to focus safety comparisons on larger warehouses.
He accused the Senate investigation of ignoring inconvenient facts, such as declining injury rates and a recent court victory that dismissed safety complaints.
He said another team reviewing recommendations from Amazon's internal security study concluded the methodology was “not robust.”
“Nothing” is more important to the company than employee safety, Amazon said.
“Senator Sanders and his team chose to rely on Soteria’s debunked analysis because it fits the false narrative he wanted to construct,” the company added.
