It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Not Christmas, but Amazon Prime Day. At least if you’re a consumer taking advantage of the deals offered by the e-commerce giant, which ranks second on the Fortune 500. And it’s especially lucrative for Amazon, which in 2023 recorded $12.7 billion in sales across 375 million products over just two days.
But Prime Day is doomsday for Amazon warehouse workers who are suffering injuries at a “horrific level” during a week of heavy traffic, according to a report. a report Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders issued a statement Tuesday.
During the week of Prime Day in 2019, nearly half of all Amazon warehouse workers suffered on-the-job injuries, according to the report, which cites “internal Amazon documents.” Sanders said in a statement that Amazon’s “incredibly dangerous working conditions” reflect “the kind of corporate greed that the American people are tired of.” The report also says there were nearly 45 injuries per 100 workers during the week of Prime Day in 2019.
Amazon denies these findings.
“Unfortunately, this report — which was not shared with us prior to publication — ignores our progress and paints a false, one-sided narrative using only a fraction of the information we provided,” says Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman. luck“It draws sweeping and inaccurate conclusions based on unverified anecdotes, presents misinformation from years-old documents, and contains factual errors and flawed analyses.”
The report released by Sanders’ office includes injuries that the company is not required to disclose to OSHA. However, Amazon’s “recordable” injury rate, or injuries that the company is required to disclose to OSHA, was still more than double the industry average, with more than 10 injuries per 100 workers during the same time period, according to the report. The most recent data Amazon provided was from 2019, a Sanders spokesperson says. luck.
“Amazon, the second-largest private employer in America, is worth more than $2 trillion,” says Anna Bahr, Sanders’ communications director. “It’s owned by Jeff Bezos, the second-richest man in America, who is worth more than $2 billion.” luck“Amazon should be the safest place to work in America, not one of the most dangerous.”
Amazon also denies the report’s claims that it systematically undercounts injuries, and claims that actual injury rates are higher than reported are false. Nantel says the company is required to report any injury “that requires more than basic first aid.”
“While any company can make the occasional clerical error, after a nearly six-month investigation that gave OSHA access to all of our internal injury and incident report notes and closed-door interviews with our associates, OSHA found no intentional, deliberate, or systematic errors in our reporting,” Nantel says. Instead, Amazon has made “significant progress” in reducing its recordable incident rate by 28% since 2019.
What does the report show?
the Full report The report also includes findings from interviews with more than 100 Amazon workers, which included feelings about the pressures they face to meet demand during Prime Day and the holiday season. According to the report, this “demonstrates the company’s blatant disregard for the safety of its workers.”
Despite knowing the risks and dangers associated with peak seasons like Prime Day and the holidays, Amazon consistently fails to adequately staff its warehouses, according to the report. In fact, an October 2020 report used in the study showed that the company’s operational staffing was less than 80%, suggesting that Amazon regularly operates with a large number of vacancies. However, Nantel says these claims are untrue.
“We carefully plan and staff for major events, ensure we have excess capacity across our network, and design our network so that requests are automatically routed to locations that can handle unexpected increases in volume,” Nantel says.
Fatigue during peak season and holidays
Amazon is receiving significantly more orders than during other periods, according to the report. One worker told the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which released the report, that their delivery station had to process twice as many packages each day during Prime Day and the holidays.
Getty Images – Chris J. Ratcliffe
“At the height of the crisis, they blew up the warehouse,” the worker told the aid committee. “We were getting 120,000 packages when we normally handle 60,000.” In response, Amazon is asking employees to work faster and do longer shifts, the report said.
This can be especially stressful during the summer, when warehouse temperatures soar. In 2022, Amazon warehouse worker Rafael Reinaldo Mota Frias, 42, died during a Prime sales rush. Coworkers told Daily Beast They believed he was overworked and overheating. However, Amazon denied these claims, saying: NBC He explained that the worker’s death during the heat wave was due to a “personal medical condition.”
While the report’s findings put Amazon in a targeted position, the e-commerce giant isn’t alone in experiencing similar workplace issues.
“The recent injuries reported by Amazon workers highlight the pressing issue that workplace safety is not always guaranteed, especially in the manufacturing industry,” says Christian Grossman, a former front-line worker and author of Frontline Worker RiseTells luck.
Grossman also serves as CEO of beekeepera software company for frontline workers. 2024 Stady A study by Beekeeper, which surveyed 2,000 manufacturing workers around the world, found that safety concerns were among the biggest stressors for frontline teams.
“For decades, unsafe working conditions have been a constant concern for frontline workers and managers, with insufficient measures taken to prioritize and protect these frontline employees,” Grossman says.
However, Amazon insists it has made progress in improving safety standards and working conditions for warehouse employees.
“If someone wants to truly understand the facts about our safety record and our progress toward being the safest company in the industries we operate in, we encourage them to review Annual Safety Report “Or come visit one of our locations to meet your needs and see it for yourself,” says Nantel.