The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, issued a citation against Amazon, alleging that the company violated safety laws and failed to keep workers safe at three warehouses. The regulator has also proposed $60,269 in fines related to the violations, a drop in the bucket for a company that posted over $127 billion in sales during the third quarter of 2022 only but a relatively high penalty compared to many OSHA has faced before.
According to a press release, the citation stems from inspections at three warehouses located in Deltona, Florida, Waukegan, Illinois, and New Windsor, New York. OSHA says Amazon “exposed workers to shock and ergonomic hazards” on site, putting them at “high risk of lower back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders.”
Doug Parker, assistant secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, placed some of the blame on the pace Amazon sets for its warehouse employees. “Each of these inspections found work processes that were designed for speed but not for safety,” he said, noting that the system at the warehouses appeared to be geared toward shipping packages rather than worker safety.
It’s a criticism Amazon has faced for years, including from OSHA itself. Last year, advocacy group The Strategic Organizing Center released a report saying Amazon workers account for a disproportionately high percentage of all warehouse industry injuries in the US outside the warehouse, a 2019 report. of buzz Y ProPublica accused the company of trading security for speed in its delivery network, and the SOC reiterated that point last year.
A statement from the activist group Athena Coalition quotes Daniel Olayiwola, an Amazon warehouse worker in San Antonio: “OSHA’s findings are reflective of the experience of Amazon workers like me in warehouses across the country.” Olayiwola says that workers have been “talking for years about the grueling pace of work and exploitative policies that directly cause exhaustion, severe stress on our bodies, and unsafe situations.”
For its part, Amazon disagrees with OSHA’s latest allegations. “We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously, and we strongly disagree with these allegations and intend to appeal,” spokeswoman Kelly Nantel read in a statement. “We have fully cooperated and the government’s allegations do not reflect the reality of security at our sites.” Nantel also cites an improvement in the company’s injury rates between 2019 and 2021 (a claim similar to what Amazon made in response to the 2022 SOC report) and says that “we look forward to sharing more during our appeal about the many safety innovations , the process improvements and investments we are making to further reduce injuries.”
According to OSHA, Amazon received citations for 14 recordkeeping violations last year for “failing to record injuries and illnesses, misclassifying injuries and illnesses, failing to record injuries and illnesses within the required time, and failing to provide OSHA with timely injury and illness records.” . Those came with proposed fines of around $29,008 and were part of the same investigation as the citations announced Wednesday.
The regulator criticizing Amazon is rare but not unknown. The company received a citation in 2015 for failing to properly record work-related injuries and illnesses, as well as a bunch of covid related quotes in 2020.
OSHA says it is also conducting investigations at three other Amazon warehouses in Aurora, Colorado, Nampa, Idaho, and Castleton, New York, after the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York recommended it last summer.
