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An investigation spearheaded by Senator Bernie Sanders examining Amazon’s practices found that nearly half of the company's warehouse workers get hurt around the Prime Day rush.
The report comes out on the heels of this year's Prime Day — July 16 and 17 — when the megashipper offers deeply discounted deals on a huge selection of products.
The new interim report, produced by the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committtee chairman Bernie Sanders says the rush around Prime Day deliveries results in a notable number of workplace injuries at Amazon's warehouses.
During Prime Day 2019, "just under" 45 out of 100 workers documented were injured, or "nearly half of the company warehouse workers" according to the report. The data used for the report was provided by Amazon to the Senate.
“We’ve cooperated throughout this investigation, including providing thousands of pages of information and documents. But unfortunately, this report (which was not shared with us before publishing) ignores our progress and paints a one-sided, false narrative using only a fraction of the information we’ve provided,” Amazon told The Independent. “It draws sweeping and inaccurate conclusions based on unverified anecdotes, and it misrepresents documents that are several years old and contained factual errors and faulty analysis.”
According to the report, injuries noted include smaller ones that Amazon is not required to report to OSHA, like paper cuts, scrapes, and bruises.
Of the more serious injuries that did require OSHA reporting, Amazon had a rate of 10 injuries per 100 workers, which the Sanders report noted was "more than double the industry average."
Sanders laid into Amazon after the report released, accusing the company of treating "its workers as disposable."
"That is unacceptable, and that has got to change," Sanders said.
An Amazon spokesperson said some of the information in Sanders’ report was drawn from incorrect reporting on their part.
“As we previously explained to Senator Sanders’ staff, the graph they published in their report came from a five-year-old internal document that had flawed methodology and gaps in the research,” Amazon told The Independent. “The document was reviewed, refuted, and rejected by experts who specialize in data analysis – and the Senator and his staff know this. What’s more concerning is that they intentionally disregarded four years of continuous improvement with regard to Amazon’s safety metrics – despite having access to our safety data from 2019-2023.”
The spokesperson said that “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 per cent, 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 per cent.”
Sanders’ report argues that Amazon’s accidents would be partially avoidable if the company increased its staff, especially during its busiest operating days.
The report claims that Amazon has too few employees working, which leads to over reliance on its current workforce, and workplace injuries as a result.
In 2021, Amazon produced an internal report called "Prime Day Lessons Learned." In that document, Amazon's researchers noted that the company had only hit 71.2 per cent of its hiring targets between May and June of 2021 — a fact that the Senate pointed to as evidence of its understaffing.
Fewer staff means the workers who are on the warehouse floors need to move faster to keep up with demand. Pushing themselves harder and harder to allow Amazon to do more with less, the report argues, is driving up the injury rates on busy days.
“These workers not only confirmed that the company sets unsustainable productivity requirements and that serious injuries are common, they also told Committee staff that Amazon’s busiest periods—Prime Day and the holiday season—are by far the most dangerous,” the report said.
Sanders accused Amazon of "corporate greed" on Tuesday in response to the report.
“The incredibly dangerous working conditions at Amazon revealed in this investigation are a perfect example of the type of corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of,” Sanders said. “Despite making $36 billion in profits last year and providing its CEO with over $275 million in compensation over the past three years, Amazon continues to treat its workers as disposable and with complete contempt for their safety and wellbeing. “
