OSHA Is (Finally) Investigating the Hell Out of Amazon

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MotherJones

Recent investigations by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have found that Amazon is continually failing to keep workers like Crane, a packer at a St. Louis–area warehouse, safe from back injuries and other serious, chronic muscular disorders. The agency concluded that Amazon was endangering employees in at least six warehouses across five states—an unprecedented geographic range for its inspections—in part with intense productivity quotas that drive an injury rate of 6.8 per 100 workers, more than double the industry average. Eric Frumin, health and safety director of the Strategic Organizing Center, a labor union coalition, said OSHA may have just conducted “the broadest investigation by the Labor Department in all of history.”

The total fines were paltry: $107,144 in total, or 0.00000021 percent of the company’s 2022 revenue. (Amazon, which "strongly disagrees" with OSHA’s findings, plans to appeal them.) But the fines and investigation are nevertheless “historic,” say many labor experts and former OSHA officials, signaling an era in which US regulators will pursue real consequences for the shipping behemoth—starting, in this case, with more sustainable quotas and a safer workplace.

With ongoing appeals, it isn’t likely that we’ll see immediate change for workers like Crane. But there’s “only so much denial that Amazon can do,” says Berkowitz. Upheld, the citations set the stage for steeper fines—”willful” violations, like those repeated after a citation, can be ten times more costly—and help establish a pattern of worker endangerment. That’s groundwork for court orders forcing Amazon to address warehouse conditions, and potentially for even more sweeping inspections. Also possible: a chilling effect on the “Amazonification” of the American workforce, in which smaller companies look to impose Amazon-style quotas and practices.

Finally, but...

[Phoenix61]

1. Seem it would also make it easier for workers who are

injured to win lawsuits against Amazon. That whole “depraved indifference” doesn’t seem to sit well with jurors.

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2. That's a good point.