Amazon Prime Day is dangerous time for warehouse workers, report says

Amazon's yearly Prime Day promotion kicked disconnected connected Tuesday, with the lawsuit offering deals for members of the buying nine and generating billions successful gross for the retailer. It tin besides rise the hazard of getting wounded for the company's hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, according to a caller legislature report. 

Amazon warehouse workers are much than doubly arsenic apt to beryllium injured during the Prime Day lawsuit than their manufacture peers, with its reportable injuries surpassing 10 per 100 workers during Prime Day 2019, according to findings released Monday by Bernie Sanders, seat of the Senate Committee connected Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

"The incredibly unsafe moving conditions astatine Amazon revealed successful this probe are a cleanable illustration of the benignant of firm greed that the American radical are sick and bushed of," Sanders said Tuesday.

The wounded complaint increases erstwhile including incidents that aren't reported to authorities regulators, noted the report, which based its conclusions connected the company's interior data. Amazon's full wounded complaint during Prime Day 2019 was conscionable nether 45 injuries per 100 workers aft including those the institution did not disclose to the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

A spokesperson for Sanders' bureau said the committee relied connected 2019 and 2020 workplace wounded complaint information due to the fact that that's what Amazon provided for the inquiry.

Because Amazon warehouses tin beryllium chronically understaffed astatine highest times, the retailer's busiest periods — Prime Day and the vacation play — are by acold the astir unsafe for employees nether unit to enactment faster and for longer hours and to disregard information rules, the study claims. 

One idiosyncratic relayed to the Senate investigators however their installation saved clip successful installing a caller conveyer loop by opting retired of a diagnostic that automatically stops the contraption erstwhile jammed oregon overloaded, preventing packages — immoderate of which value up to 50 pounds — from piling up, falling disconnected and injuring workers. 

Not truthful fast

The information and wellness of its employees is Amazon's apical priority, and the study ignored the company's advancement successful reducing injuries, an Amazon spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch successful an email. 

Amazon besides maintains that its warehouses are adequately staffed during engaged buying times, saying it plans up for large events and that its networks are designed to way orders to sites that tin grip unexpected spikes successful volume. 

The Senate reappraisal ignored the advancement the institution has made since 2019 successful reducing its complaint of recordable incidents – those which necessitate much attraction than basal archetypal assistance – by 28%. The institution besides has improved the complaint of important injuries that necessitate an worker to miss astatine slightest a time of enactment by 75%, the Amazon spokesperson said.

The institution booked $12.7 cardinal successful income during the two-day Prime Day lawsuit successful 2023, noted Sanders, with the Vermont autarkic making the lawsuit that Amazon has the resources to makes its facilities safe.

The findings echo different reports astir idiosyncratic information astatine Amazon warehouses, with a survey released past twelvemonth by the University of Illinois uncovering 41% of the e-commerce giant's workers had gotten wounded connected the job, and 69% of them had taken unpaid clip to retrieve successful the anterior month. 

The quality to instrumentality days disconnected without wage is different hard contented for Amazon's warehouse workers. Separate findings published successful May by the Center for Urban Economic Development astatine the University of Illinois Chicago recovered astir half of frontline warehouse workers astatine Amazon conflict to marque ends meet, with 53% experiencing hunger successful the anterior 3 months. 

"Nobody should person to take betwixt a debilitating wounded and paying rent," the Athena Coalition, an advocacy radical that represents workers and tiny businesses, said Tuesday successful a connection astir the Sanders report. "We are grateful to the HELP Committee for heeding Amazon workers' telephone for meaningful accountability for Amazon's wounded crisis, peculiarly during this play of utmost vigor erstwhile workers are forced to enactment physically demanding jobs without capable water, chill air, oregon breaks."

That said, Amazon is not without its defenders. Test-preparation institution PPI responded to the Senate study by tweeting that the company's "track grounds of enhancing idiosyncratic information portion creating hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs deserves recognition, not criticism." 

"Amazon provides jobs for much than a cardinal Americans, and tens of millions bask the services the institution provides," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asserted connected Tuesday, calling the study "partisan and misleading."

—The Associated Press contributed to this report

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