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In a letter to Amazon announcing the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) was opening an investigation on the retailer, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called Amazon’s warehouses “uniquely dangerous” and said the company treats employees as “disposable.”
Sanders didn’t pull any punches in the letter sent Tuesday to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Sanders accuses founder Jeff Bezos and Jassy of creating “a corporate culture that treats workers as disposable.”
“At every turn—from warehouse design and workstation setup, to pace of work requirements, to medical care for injuries and subsequent pressure to return to work—Amazon makes decisions that actively harm workers in the name of its bottom line,” Sanders wrote.
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Sanders points out other investigations into Amazon’s practices by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and by United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York over worker safety. Despite these investigations, conditions in Amazon’s warehouses haven’t improved, Sanders says. In fact, the rate of serious injuries at Amazon warehouses—6.6 per 100 workers—is more than twice the injury rate at other warehouses, Sanders says.
“Amazon’s warehouses are uniquely dangerous. In 2022 alone, Amazon warehouse workers suffered nearly 39,000 injuries, 95 percent of which were so serious that they required workers to either lose time at work or switch to modified duty,” Sanders wrote.
To illustrate, Sanders cites stories that he and his staff had heard from Amazon employees. An unnamed worker said she had to take vacation time to heal from on-the-job injuries to both wrists, because Amazon “would not let her slow down to heal.” Another worker said she injured her knee so badly she could barely walk from the parking lot to her job, but Amazon forced her to be on her feet for the entire shift.
Sanders also alleges that Amazon’s on-site medical clinics are “designed to undertreat and underreport injuries and to get workers back on warehouse floors as soon as possible.” He says in one case, a worker hit on the head by a falling box showed signs of a skull fracture, but was put back to work after visiting the clinic. Since companies are required to report injuries that need treatment “beyond first aid” to OSHA, if the clinic refuses to give anything beyond first aid, it doesn’t have to report the injury, Sanders said.
“In one story shared with my staff, Amazon steered a worker experiencing severe back pain to a doctor who told her that her back was fine and that she should return to work. When she got a second opinion from a doctor not affiliated with the company, she learned that three discs in her back were injured and that she needed immediate treatment. She had to fight Amazon for months to receive this treatment, worsening her injury and leaving her with long-term pain,” he wrote.
Sanders’ letter closes with a nine-item request for information. Amazon has until July 5 to respond.
Amazon has faced allegations of mistreating workers in its warehouses since at least 2013, when a bombshell Financial Times article described working conditions in one of the company’s UK warehouses. The article said workers walk between seven and 15 miles a day in ill-fitting safety boots provided by Amazon, and are constantly monitored. And in 2021, an article in The Intercept alleged that Amazon drivers were forced to pee in bottles, however the company denied this.
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