Danielle Roland, an injury prevention specialist at a fulfillment center in Tampa, Fla., leads employees through an active warmup. Source: Amazon |
States are ramping up their scrutiny of Amazon.com Inc.'s working conditions amid rising concerns about the e-commerce giant's warehouse employees. But federal action on the issue could take a little longer.
A recent report released by the Strategic Organizing Center, or SOC, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of four labor unions representing more than 4 million workers, found that Amazon warehouse employees had 5.9 serious injuries per 100 workers in 2020 that required workers to either miss work or be placed on light or restricted duty — a rate nearly 80% higher than all other employers in the warehousing industry in 2020.
Labor experts said the report, which is based on data that Amazon submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, could lend momentum to the spate of state-level actions in recent months that have targeted Amazon's working conditions. And though the report could also prompt action at the federal level, experts note there are several reasons action could be delayed, including a lack of resources.
Debbie Berkowitz, worker safety and health program director at the National Employment Law Project and a former senior OSHA official during the Obama administration, said the SOC report "sort of lays the gauntlet down for federal and state OSHAs."
"[They] could use this report to start walking into warehouses and saying 'this is a referral, you have incredibly high injury rates and we need to figure out why,'" Berkowitz said.
Amazon did not respond to requests for comment on the risk for regulatory action, but the company highlighted its many safety measures enacted over the past year.
States take action
In a June 17 statement emailed to S&P Global Market Intelligence, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said the company disagreed with the allegations and filed an appeal.
"Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) like sprains or strains often caused by repetitive motions are common in the type of work that we do and are more likely to occur during an employee's first six months. This is a challenge for the whole industry, and we are actively working to invent solutions that reduce MSDs for new employees," Nantel said.
A few months earlier, California State Assembly member Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, introduced a bill to protect employees in warehouse distribution centers by creating statewide standards to minimize job injuries and strengthen workers' rights against "arbitrary and abusive work quota systems."
Similar legislation is certainly possible in other states, said Eric Frumin, director of health and safety at the SOC.
"We're seeing many new kinds of legislation at the state level to respond to the levels of employer abuses across the board these days," Frumin said.
Equal application
Aurelien Portuese, director of antitrust and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, warned, however, that lawmakers must be careful not to single out Amazon for labor regulatory action as it would undermine competition and give other companies in the retail industry an unfair advantage.
"I think the laws should apply equally," Portuese said.
At the national level, it is unclear exactly how much pressure the federal OSHA will put on Amazon or how soon, given that the agency was "hollowed out" under the Trump administration, according to Berkowitz. In 2020, OSHA had 1,816 full-time equivalent employees versus 2,046 in 2016. OSHA requested 2,246 full-time equivalents for 2022.
OSHA did not respond to requests for comment.
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The Biden administration called for doubling the number of OSHA investigators, but Berkowitz said it could take time before the agency gets fully "back online."
Preventative measures
That could give Amazon some time to continue rolling out programs aimed at improving worker safety.
In an email statement, Nantel said the company invested more than $1 billion in new safety measures in 2020, including expanding its WorkingWell program. Amazon launched the program, which coaches small groups of employees on body mechanics and proactive wellness, to 859,000 employees at 350 sites across North America and Europe in 2020. Amazon also created a WorkingWell mobile app that provides remote workers at-home access to all of the on-site safety, health, and wellness offerings in Amazon buildings. The offerings include AmaZen, which focuses on mindfulness exercises, EatWell, Mind and Body Moments, and more.
On top of all this, Amazon grew its dedicated workplace health and safety team to more than 6,200 employees in 2020.
And June 10, Amazon and the National Safety Council announced a five-year $12 million partnership to invent new ways to prevent musculoskeletal disorders. About 40% of work-related injuries at Amazon are related to those disorders, which can be caused by repetitive motions.
"While any incident is one too many, we are continuously learning and seeing improvements through ergonomics programs, guided exercises at employees' workstations, mechanical assistance equipment, workstation setup and design, and forklift telematics and guardrails — to name a few," Nantel said.
More work ahead
But the SOC notes in its report that while COVID-19 and worker backlash forced Amazon to make improvements in 2020, more work remains to be done.
"As a likely result of these COVID-related changes, the injury rate in Amazon warehouses for 2020 was lower than in previous years, although it still remained substantially higher than the injury rates for other warehouse employers," the report states.
Looking solely at injuries that required a worker to miss work, Amazon's warehouse injury rate declined from 5.1 in 2019 to 2.6 in 2020. But that rate was still more than twice as high as that of brick-and-mortar rival Walmart Inc. last year.
"It's not the kind of revelation that's going to change everything overnight, but I think it provides some additional ammunition both for regulators and worker advocates who want to address the issue with more robust action," said Joshua Freeman, distinguished professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.