Employees at packing stations are seen at Amazon's Kent, Washington, fulfillment centre. Injury rates in Amazon’s warehouses have drawn state and federal scrutiny. — The Seattle Times/TNS
Injury rates in Amazon warehouses fell in 2024 for the third year in a row, but a coalition of labour unions that tracks the data said Amazon isn’t making improvements fast enough.
In 2020, founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos said the company was committed to become “Earth’s safest place to work”. Injury rates had spiked in 2019, reaching as high as 8.7 incidents per 100 workers, according to Amazon.
The rate fell in 2020 but jumped up again in 2021. Since then, by Amazon’s count, rates have fallen each year. The Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of labour unions that tracks Amazon injury data, reported the same trend.
Where Amazon and SOC differ is in how they analyse the data that Amazon submits to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Amazon reports two metrics: its recordable incident rate in the US, which include work-related injuries that require more than basic first-aid treatment, and its lost-time incident rate, which includes work-related injuries that require time away from work. In 2024, Amazon’s recordable incident rate was six per 100 workers while its lost-time incident rate was 1.2 per 100 workers.
Over the past five years, those metrics saw 31% and 76.5% improvement, respectively.
To measure serious injuries, the SOC combines those metrics for its rate and in a report released Thursday found that the injury rate among warehouse workers last year was six per 100 workers compared to about 6.5 per 100 in 2023.
Amazon in its latest safety performance report, released in March, attributed its decline to billions invested in safety efforts since 2019. Amazon said warehouses were inspected and retrofitted with adjustable workstations to help with common injuries like musculoskeletal disorder, which come from repetitive and strained movements.
The company said those sprains and strains make up about 57% of all injuries.
The SOC report maintains Amazon’s efforts aren’t solving the problem fast enough. It found that while the overall serious injury rate decreased, four out of 10 Amazon workers are in facilities where injuries increased between 2023 and 2024.
“What we’re seeing is that rather than face the crisis head on, management has largely stopped talking about it and when it does it uses misleading comparisons to deflect attention and minimize the problem,” said David Rosenblatt, a deputy director strategic research and campaigns at SOC. “This is not just a data disagreement; this is a problem that has real human consequences for tens of thousands of people every year.”
Rosenblatt pointed out Amazon’s latest shareholder letter in 2024 didn’t mention worker safety, unlike years prior.
In its own safety report, Amazon said its data shows the company is making “steady and meaningful progress. That said, we’ve never aspired to be average because when it comes to safety there is no such thing as ‘good enough’.”
The SOC also reported that Amazon’s injury rates don’t stack up well against the rest of the warehousing industry. While Amazon’s injury rate was 6.0 in 2024, the rate for non-Amazon warehouses last year was 3.7 per 100 workers, according to the SOC.
Amazon compared its own data to an industry average provided by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. The company’s recorded incident report rates are higher than the industry average but every other metric is performing better than the average.
The SOC called foul on those comparisons in its report, saying since Amazon is a major player in warehouse employment the data was skewed and included Amazon’s own injury data. Rosenblatt called it Amazon comparing itself against itself.
“Our approach is to say, you have to take Amazon out of the data to be able to accurately compare the company to the industry,” he said.
Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson said the SOC’s report misleads readers by cherry-picking data.
“The facts are that we’ve made a 34% improvement in our Recordable Incident Rate and a 65% improvement to our Lost Time Incident Rate over the last five years,” Stephenson said in an emailed statement. “Our goal is to be the safest employer in our respective industries, and we’re working hard to achieve that because nothing’s more important than our employees’ health and safety.”
Injury rates in Amazon’s warehouses have drawn state and federal scrutiny. Last year, a Senate probe led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., ultimately accused Amazon of ignoring the results of internal studies focused on warehouse safety and instead pushed for higher productivity.
Injury rates at Amazon warehouses in Washington state were included in the Senate probe.
Amazon disputed the findings and in a company blog post said Sanders’ report was “an attempt to collect information and twist it to support a false narrative.” – The Seattle Times/Tribune News Service
Unlock 30% Savings on Ad-Free Access Now!
