Senate report accuses Amazon of ignoring worker safety in productivity push

By Chris Isidore, CNN

New York (CNN) — Amazon is disregarding its own research that shows warehouse employees are facing an increased injury threat due to its focus on productivity, according to Senate investigators.

The Senate report released Sunday said the company forces workers to repeat the same movements hundreds, if not thousands, of times each shift, resulting in extremely high rates of injury to their muscles and joints. Amazon also forces workers to choose between following safety procedures, such as asking for help to move heavy objects, or risk discipline and potential termination for not moving fast enough, the report said.

But the company insists the report intentionally distorts data, and its record shows injuries are down even while its output has increased significantly in recent years.

The 160-page report, from the staff of a Senate committee headed by long-time Amazon critic Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is not the first time that Amazon’s pace has been challenged by government investigators. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration proposed fines totaling $100,000 in 2023 citing conditions that exposed workers to ergonomic hazards.

But the report says the allowable OSHA fines are insufficient to force Amazon, which pulled in more than $17 billion in profits in its most recent quarter, to change its behavior. Amazon is fighting those findings as well, and insists it’s taking successful steps to reduce injuries at its facilities.

The Senate committee report, first reported by the New York Times, is titled “The ‘Injury-Productivity Trade-off’: How Amazon’s Obsession with Speed Creates Uniquely Dangerous Warehouses.”

“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,” Sanders said in a statement. “This is precisely the type of outrageous corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of.”

The report says that many Amazon warehouse workers “live with severe injuries and permanent disabilities because of the company’s insistence on enforcing grueling productivity quotas and its refusal to adequately care for injured workers.”

The report also said investigators found “evidence that Amazon is aware of the safety risks caused by the speed it demands of its workers,” citing Amazon’s own internal worker safety studies, which they accused Amazon of not adhering to.

An Amazon internal report cited by Senate investigators, titled Project Soteria, found there was a relationship between the speed of tasks that workers performed and their rate of injury. Project Soteria recommended changing speed-related discipline and time-off policies to reduce injury rates.

In response, Amazon described Project Soteria as “outdated” and “inaccurate,” as well as “analytically unsound.” Amazon said its injury rate at its US warehouses fell 28% from 2019 to 2023 when measuring injuries that require more than basic first aid, and that it reduced injuries that led to workers missing time off work by 75% during the same period.

“The report accuses us of having safety policies in place but not following them, which is hard to square with our significant progress: strong policies – and adherence to them – are helping us create a safer work environment every day,” Amazon said.

Amazon said that a lawsuit brought against the company by labor regulators from Washington state, which also cited the Project Soteria study, was dismissed by a state judge, who found “the department did not establish that the pace of work was hazardous.”

“Sen. Sanders and his staff chose to rely on the debunked Soteria analysis because it fits the false narrative he wanted to build,” said Amazon.

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