Amazon warehouses are ridiculously dangerous for workers. Despite the obscene wealth that the company and its founder rake in, Amazon’s safety standards are so abysmal that they have a higher injury rate in their warehouses than that of their rivals.
“Amazon warehouse workers in the U.S. suffered serious injuries at twice the rate of rival companies in 2021, according to a new study.
There were 6.8 serious injuries for every 100 Amazon warehouse workers. That’s more than twice the rate of all other employers in the warehouse industry, which had 3.3 serious injuries per 100 workers, the Strategic Organizing Center said in a report released Tuesday.
The SOC, which is a coalition of labor unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, analyzed data Amazon submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about its warehouses in 2021.
Even as Amazon set its sights on improving workplace safety, including a pledge to become “Earth’s Safest Place to Work,” injuries at its U.S. warehouses increased between 2020 and 2021.
Amazon reported approximately 38,300 total injuries at its U.S. facilities in 2021, up about 20% from 27,100 injuries in 2020. The vast majority of injuries in 2021 were categorized as serious, or injuries “where workers were hurt so badly that they were either unable to perform their regular job functions (light duty) or forced to miss work entirely (lost time),” according to the report.
Amazon was responsible for a “staggering” amount of worker injuries in the U.S., the report found. In 2021, Amazon accounted for almost half of all injuries in the industry, while making up a third of all U.S. warehouse workers.”
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