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Economy|Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/business/economy/amazon-warehouse-injuries.html
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A staff report by the Senate labor committee, led by Bernie Sanders, uncovered evidence of internal concern about high injury rates at the e-commerce giant.
Noam Scheiber has covered working conditions at Amazon for more than five years.
Dec. 16, 2024, 6:00 a.m. ET
For years, worker advocates and some government officials have argued that Amazon’s strict production quotas lead to high rates of injury for its warehouse employees. And for years, Amazon has rejected the criticism, arguing that it doesn’t use strict quotas, and that its injury rates are falling close to or below the industry average.
On Sunday, the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which is chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, published an investigation that found that Amazon itself had documented the link between its quotas and elevated injury rates.
Internal company documents collected by Mr. Sanders’s investigators show that Amazon health and safety personnel recommended relaxing enforcement of the production quotas to lower injury rates, but that senior executives rejected the recommendations apparently because they worried about the effect on the company’s performance.
The report also affirmed the findings of investigations undertaken by a union-backed group showing that injury rates at Amazon were almost twice the average for the rest of the industry.
“The shockingly dangerous working conditions at Amazon’s warehouses revealed in this 160-page report are beyond unacceptable,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement. “Amazon’s executives repeatedly chose to put profits ahead of the health and safety of its workers by ignoring recommendations that would substantially reduce injuries.”
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the internal studies and recommendations Mr. Sanders’s report cited were later found by the company to be invalid. “Sen. Sanders’ report is wrong on the facts and weaves together out-of-date documents and unverifiable anecdotes to create a preconceived narrative,” she said.
