NEWS: Sanders Releases Sweeping Report Exposing How Amazon’s Obsession with Speed Injures Workers at Unprecedented Rates

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 – On the heels of thousands of Amazon workers voting to authorize a strike at the company’s first-ever unionized warehouse, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), yesterday released a report entitled “The ‘Injury-Productivity Trade-off’: How Amazon’s Obsession with Speed Creates Uniquely Dangerous Warehouses.” The report presents the findings of a sweeping, 18-month investigation led by Chairman Sanders into Amazon’s abysmal workplace safety practices.

“The shockingly dangerous working conditions at Amazon’s warehouses revealed in this 160-page report are beyond unacceptable,” said Chairman Sanders. “Making matters even worse: 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 at its warehouses. This is precisely the type of outrageous corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of.”

As part of the investigation, the Committee analyzed Amazon’s data and found that Amazon warehouses recorded over 30 percent more injuries than the warehousing industry average in 2023. The Committee also found that in each of the past seven years, Amazon workers were nearly twice as likely to be injured as workers in other warehouses. Alarmingly, this problem is widespread: More than two-thirds of Amazon’s warehouses have injury rates that exceed the industry average.

“Amazon forces workers to operate in a system that demands impossible rates and treats them as disposable when they are injured,” Sanders continued. “It accepts worker injuries and their long-term pain and disabilities as the cost of doing business. That cannot continue. Amazon is a $2.3 trillion corporation. It made over $36 billion in profits last year alone. Its founder, Jeff Bezos, is the second wealthiest person on the planet worth over $240 billion. Its CEO, Andy Jassey, made over $300 million in total compensation since 2021. Amazon should be one of the safest places to work, not one of the most dangerous. Amazon cannot continue to treat its workers as disposable. It must be held accountable.”

The Committee’s investigation uncovered new evidence that Amazon knows that its productivity standards for workers are the reason they are so frequently injured. Amazon even developed proposals to lower its injury rates. But the company chose not to implement them because it was afraid they would hurt its bottom line. Instead, the company proposed a different theory: That the real reason for workers’ injuries was their own “frailty” and the higher “intrinsic likelihood of injury” among certain workers. Amazon refused to make changes that could protect workers from injuries and pain — choosing to protect its profits instead.

Amazon also misrepresents its injury rates to regulators and the public, claiming its warehouses are far safer than they truly are. Ironically, Heather MacDougall, former Amazon Vice President of Health & Safety, is now under consideration by President-elect Trump to lead the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which is tasked with ensuring the health and safety of U.S. workers.

The report includes extensive evidence of a corporate culture obsessed with speed and productivity. This culture, driven by relentless productivity demands, has resulted in systemic safety failures and high rates of injury. When workers are inevitably injured, Amazon prevents them from receiving needed medical care, and terminates workers who are on approved medical leave.

“When I started, I thought the company was there for you,” a worker identified as RS told the Committee. “They told us to report any injuries. Then I got injured and saw what it really was and couldn’t believe that a huge company that preaches how they’re there for workers really treats people.”

The report included the below key findings as well as legislative recommendations that address many of the issues the Committee uncovered.

Key Findings

1. Amazon manipulates its workplace injury data to make its warehouses seem safer than they actually are.
2. Contrary to its public claims, Amazon imposes speed and productivity requirements on workers, commonly called “rates.”
3. Amazon forces workers to move in unsafe ways and to repeat the same movements hundreds and thousands of times each shift, resulting in extremely high rates of musculoskeletal disorders.
4. Although Amazon has safety procedures in place, the company’s speed requirements make those procedures nearly impossible to follow.
5. Amazon’s failure to ensure safe working environments — based in large part on its unsustainable rates and productivity quotas — results in debilitating injuries.
6. Amazon has studied the connection between speed requirements and worker injuries for years, but refuses to implement injury-reducing changes because of concerns those changes might reduce productivity.
7. Amazon actively discourages injured workers from receiving outside medical care, putting injured workers further at risk.
8. The company makes it extremely difficult for workers who need short-term or permanent workplace accommodations for work-related injuries and disabilities to access those accommodations.
9. Amazon terminates workers injured in the company’s warehouses who are on approved medical leave.
10. Amazon deflates the injury numbers it records for federal regulators.

Legislative Recommendations

1. Pass S.4260 – Warehouse Worker Protection Act.
2. Pass H.R. 2998 – Protecting America’s Workers Act.
3. Pass S.567 – Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act.
4. Pass S.2419 – No Robots Bosses Act.
5. Pass S.262 – Stop Spying Bosses Act.
6. Pass S.2501 – Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury and Fatality Prevention Act.
7. Pass the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Act.

“These findings are both infuriating and validating. It’s infuriating that we have sounded the alarm for so long and seen Amazon respond by denying our reality and minimizing our pain—all while growing an already serious injury crisis for the sake of their profits. Some people can go back to work after their injuries and some of them, like me, will never be able to work again because of this company’s mistreatment,” said Christine Manno, an Amazon worker at STL8 in St. Peters, Missouri. “At the same time, seeing the HELP Committee confirm and lift up the stories of me and my coworkers – and the proof of our job-related injuries – gives me hope that we are one step closer to Amazon taking responsibility for our safety. These findings getting published is the result of our organizing at STL8. My story would have never gotten this far had I not joined together with other Amazon employees, and none of us are backing down until we win the fight for safer work, higher pay, and a union.”

“The pace of work at Amazon is dangerous. When we’ve sounded the alarm about safety issues on the job, management has responded by punishing those of us who speak up,” said Amazon ATL6 associate Ron Sewell, whose Unfair Labor Practice complaint against Amazon was recently settled with the National Labor Relations Board. “I refuse to stay quiet. I’m going to fight to make Amazon abide by its word when they say that the health and safety of associates comes first. This Senate investigation backs up what workers have been saying all along.”

Read the full report, here.
Read the appendix of documents produced by Amazon during the investigation, here.
Read the appendix of documents produced by workers during the investigation, here.