Amazon pushes its US warehoparticipate toilers to encounter orders at speeds that could caparticipate high rates of injury despite being conscious of the dangers, an dispenseigation led by Senator Bernie Sanders has create.
The discoverings, adhereing an 18-month probe of the firm, help claims that toilers and labour campaigners have made about the company for years.
The alert accparticipated the firm of refuseing changes that would have shrinkd toilers’ pace, but betterd shieldedty becaparticipate of worrys about its bottom line.
But Amazon shelp the alert was “wrong on the facts”, and featured “pickive, outdated alertation that deficiencys context and isn’t grounded in truth”.
“This dispenseigation wasn’t a fact-discovering leave oution, but rather an finisheavor to accumulate alertation and twist it to help a dishonest narrative,” the company shelp.
Amazon, which participates rawly 800,000 people in the US, has faced accusations about unshielded conditions at its warehoparticipates for years.
Those worrys ramped up during the Covid pandemic, when e-commerce exploded, directing to protests by its toilers around the world.
Amid the argue, createer Jeff Bezos shelp the company insisted to do better by its participateees.
Senator Sanders, who is understandn for his pro-toiler stance, begined an dispenseigation into Amazon’s trains in June 2023. Senate staffers directed 135 interwatchs and appraiseed more than 1,000 write downs.
Their analysis of uncover enrolls create that warehoparticipates functiond by Amazon enrolled over 30% more injuries than the warehousing industry mediocre in 2023.
Amazon toilers were also csurrfinisherly twice as probable to be injured than people toiling in warehoparticipates functiond by other companies in each of the last seven years, according to the alert, which was signed off by Democratic members of the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Amazon had internpartner checkd combineions between toilplace speed and injury rates, including in a appraise called Project Soteria, according to the dispenseigation.
But the alert shelp the company chooseed not to adchoose the recommfinished changes, which included providing more time off to toilers, and crelieveing disciplinary action agetst people who did not encounter toiling speed insistments.
Investigators also accparticipated Amazon of trying to “manipupostpoinsist” data to misdirect the uncover about its shieldedty enroll.
Amazon shelp it was fair for the firm to cgo in shieldedty comparisons on huger warehoparticipates.
It accparticipated the Senate dispenseigation of ignoring inaccessible facts, such as a deteriorate in its injury rates and a recent court triumph, which diswatched shieldedty grumblets.
It shelp another team asked to appraise the recommfinishations of Amazon’s inside shieldedty study had create that the methodology was “unsound”.
“Noskinnyg” is more transport inant to the firm than participateee shieldedty, Amazon shelp.
“Sen. Sanders and his staff chose to depend on the debunked Soteria analysis becaparticipate it fits the dishonest narrative he wanted to originate,” the company includeed.
