Amazon was hit with an unusually powerful quote about safety today by US federal investigators. The findings seem to support what some of the company’s employees have long argued: that the online retail giant’s warehouse and fulfillment facilities are designed for speed over safety, causing low back injuries and other musculoskeletal ailments at a high rate.
The citation released today by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration concluded that Amazon “failed to keep workers safe.” The company failed to properly protect them from hazards likely to cause “serious physical harm,” the agency claims. Despite years of employee allegations and state-level investigations into Amazon’s injury rates, today’s action has led to the first federal fines imposed on Amazon for workers’ musculoskeletal injuries.
“The quotes are actually very substantive,” said Debbie Berkowitz, a former senior advisor for OSHA and a safety associate at Georgetown University. The study was unusually large for OSHA, and it’s the first time Amazon has required basic ergonomic principles to be applied to prevent injury, she says. The same investigation led OSHA in December to sue Amazon for failing to record and report work-related injuries and illness.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel says the company plans to appeal the agency’s findings. “We have fully cooperated and the government’s allegations do not reflect the reality of security at our sites,” she says. “The vast majority of our employees indicate that they believe our workplace is safe.” The federal government doesn’t provide specific guidance on ergonomics, and Amazon has invested significant time and money in lowering musculoskeletal risk, Nantel says, citing Amazon data showing that the injury rate is up nearly 15 percent from 2019 to 2021 decreased.
OSHA’s findings today mirror research from a coalition of labor unions based on previous injury data from the agency that concluded that Amazon’s injury rates are often at least double those of Walmart, its closest competitor in size and scope. During the 2022 holiday season, warehouse workers described to WIRED their personal struggles with exhaustion from overwork, wrist injuries, loud noise, and high productivity expectations.
The severity of the sentence in the new federal citation was not matched by the sentence. If Amazon loses its scheduled appeal, it will have to pay a proposed $60,269 fine — an insignificant amount relative to its nearly $1 trillion market cap.
OSHA fines for highly specific, repeated, and drastic violations can run into the millions of dollars. The oil company BP has faced multiple fines in excess of $10 million for spills and refinery accident-related violations. But the limit on fines for the kinds of safety violations that can cause back injuries, fractures or sprains is much lower, leaving companies with little financial incentive to change. “OSHA’s fines have historically been incredibly low, but the company was getting the highest possible fines, I believe, for every cited violation,” says Georgetown’s Berkowitz.
OSHA generally tries to convince companies like Amazon to prevent future injuries through detailed inspection letters with suggestions to improve processes that cause injuries. Those “danger letters” were mailed Jan. 17 to three Amazon facilities that OSHA inspected during this investigation, in Deltona, Florida; Waukegan, Illinois; and New Windsor, New York.
A letter to the Waukegan facility describes more than 20 sprains, fractures, bruises and cuts to feet, arms, faces and other body parts caused by workers who lost control of packages weighing more than 50 pounds.
