Amazon workers are injured at higher rates than previously reported by the company, according to an interim report released this week by the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in Washington, D.C.
The committee is chaired by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the investigation was prompted by organizing workers at the STL8 center in St. Peters and other Amazon workers across the country who have been publicly calling for safer working conditions and higher wages.
The Senate committee report comes after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration earlier this year cited the STL8 fulfillment facility five times for failing to report injuries. The committee found that injuries obtained on the job are higher during its busiest times than reported by Amazon, as the company may be manipulating OSHA regulations by failing to refer workers for outside medical care.
Fourteen STL8 Organizing Committee workers filed a complaint with OSHA in late July 2023. The complaint highlighted job-related injuries sustained in dangerous working conditions at the warehouse. It also stated employees received inadequate treatment from the facility’s in-house medical team, AmCare.
Calls for accountability escalated on Black Friday in November 2022 when STL8 workers walked off the job, joined by hundreds of allies and supporters for a one-day strike. The STL8 Organizing Committee made history in Missouri and in the country that year — the strike was the first Amazon action in the state and the first coordinated strike between U.S. and international Amazon workers, according to the Missouri Workers Center.
Since then, organizing STL8 workers have taken many actions, including launching a safety campaign after delivering a safety petition to management in May 2023 that garnered over 450 signatures. STL8 workers have also joined other Amazon workers across the U.S. in calls for the company to provide better working conditions, as well as connecting with senators and state representatives about needed changes.
The Senate committee for a year reviewed several internal Amazon documents regarding worker injuries during peak times, including Prime Day and the holiday season in 2019 and 2020. Prime Day is typically a major source of revenue for the company, as products are discounted. And it’s during these two periods that the highest weekly injury rates for Amazon warehouse workers occur, the report highlights.
Amazon officials, however, said the interim Senate committee report is wrong on the facts and uses a small selection of outdated data, unverified anecdotes and incorrect analysis that builds a misleading narrative.
Warehouse injuries
“The [Senate] report just underscores and confirms everything my co-workers and I at STL8 have been sounding the alarm about for a couple of years now,” said Chris Manno, a warehouse worker at the Amazon Fulfillment Center STL8 in St. Peters. “I’m living the reality of being injured at Amazon, along with many of my co-workers.”
Manno has been working at the facility since July 2019. She said she was injured on two different occasions — the first time she was hurt was in August 2021 as she developed bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome in both of her hands. The carpal tunnel, which consists of a central nerve being squeezed that runs from the elbow and into the palm, developed over time from carrying loads by herself that were too heavy, she said.
After undergoing surgery in both hands in October and again in December 2021, Manno said she was sent back to full duty about 33 days after having surgery that December.
“Full duty for me is lifting thousands of pounds over the course of a 12-hour shift,” Manno said. “So my hands progressively got worse during that time. It was a repetitive type injury. I tried to treat it at home and it just wasn't getting better. So [Amazon] finally agreed after a couple of weeks to let me go see the urgent care doctor at Concentra.”
The second time Manno was injured on the job happened in May 2022. She was trying to reach a large case that sat on a high shelf when it fell on her, she said. Manno told management about the safety issue several times prior to the accident, she said, but nothing was done about her concerns.
“I felt pain go down both sides of my neck, my back and my legs,” Manno said. “To this day, it still feels like the same day that it happened. There have been no improvements. “I have not been able to work and I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to work any job again.”
But things weren’t always as bad as they are now, Manno said. When she first started working for the company, she had a preexisting condition, fibromyalgia, which is why she walked away from desk jobs and sought employment at Amazon. Working there was helping her illness, she said.
“It was just the movement,” she said. “I was walking like, 10 to 12 miles a shift. But then during COVID, they just got really careless with safety. And more and more people were becoming injured.”
After 2020, the number of employees decreased and packages were getting larger and heavier, Manno said. Large packages that had labels on them showing they required a team lift were being lifted by single individuals, she said.
Manno is currently on medical leave, which she struggled to get after the company initially denied her on the grounds of her having a preexisting condition before she started working there, she said.
HELP report findings
Through its investigation, the Senate committee found that Amazon fails to refer workers for outside medical care, which can affect whether an injury is considered “recordable.”
Under OSHA regulations, injuries that receive medical treatment beyond first aid must be disclosed to the agency, but many injuries that receive first aid only don’t need to be disclosed.
The committee said it heard from hundreds of current and former Amazon employees across the country and interviewed more than 100 of them for the report.
“It appears that Amazon is manipulating these regulations to keep its recordable injury rate low by engaging in medical mismanagement,” the report reads. “When Amazon workers are injured, they typically visit an on-site first-aid clinic called AmCare. If their injuries are minor and require only first aid, they are usually treated and sent back to work. But if their injuries are more serious and require additional attention, they are often still only given first aid and sent back to work instead of being sent to a doctor.”
This results in worker injuries that are rendered not recordable, regardless of severity, the report states. According to OSHA, "workers cannot truly receive ‘first’ aid for the same acute injury on the 10th, 20th, or 30th visit."
In 2019, nearly 45% of workers were injured during peak times like Prime Day and holidays, as a result of company management pressuring employees to work at unsafe speeds, the Senate report details.
During Prime Day 2019, Amazon’s recordable injury rate — which represents the injuries Amazon is required to disclose to OSHA — was over 10 injuries per 100 workers. That is more than twice the industry average, according to the Missouri Workers Center.
In January 2023, OSHA cited Amazon centers in Florida, Illinois and New York for violating its rules by exposing workers to ergonomic hazards. Amazon officials said they have cooperated with the government through its investigation and are working to keep people safe and reduce injuries.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said despite the allegations, the company has made significant progress since 2019 and have reduced their recordable incident rate in the U.S. by 28%, which includes injuries that require more than basic first aid. She said the lost time incident rate has been cut by 75%, which only includes more significant injuries that require an employee to miss at least one day of work.
"The safety and health of our employees is and always will be our top priority, it comes before everything else we do," Nantel said in an emailed statement. "We’ve cooperated throughout this investigation, including providing thousands of pages of information and documents. But unfortunately, this report (which was not shared with us before publishing) ignores our progress and paints a one-sided, false narrative using only a fraction of the information we’ve provided.
"It draws sweeping and inaccurate conclusions based on unverified anecdotes, and it misrepresents documents that are several years old and contain factual errors and faulty analysis."
She said claims made in the report that the company is not adequately staffed for busy shopping periods is wrong.
"We carefully plan and staff up for major events, ensure that we have excess capacity across our network, and design our network so that orders are automatically routed to sites that can handle unexpected spikes in volume," Nantel said. "If someone wants to truly understand the facts about our safety record and our progress toward being the safest company in the industries in which we operate, we encourage them to review our annual safety report or come visit one of our fulfillment sites to see for themselves."
The Senate report says that Amazon’s recordable injury rate has fallen by 24% (slightly lower than the 28% claimed by the company) in the last four years, but it notes that OSHA has repeatedly cited the company for failing to properly record injuries during that time period.
To help prevent injuries in St. Peters, workers there want Amazon to implement an independent third-party safety audit and form an employee-led safety committee to make recommendations to management.
