Amazon Prime Day’s hidden price: greater charges of damage for staff

It’s the ultimate day for Amazon’s 48-hour Prime Day sale, during which the multinational e-commerce company affords a variety of reductions to its limitless catalog of merchandise, from $24 Hydro Flask tumblers to $80 Beats earbuds. It’s a barrage of offers that few can refuse, made even sweeter by Amazon’s same-day, one-day, or two-day supply service.

Unsurprisingly, it’s an extremely worthwhile day for Amazon. Final Prime Day, the corporate noticed $12.7 billion in gross sales and over 375 million objects bought, the most important numbers it’s seen since Prime Day launched almost 10 years in the past in 2015. Adobe Analytics, a company that research e-commerce information, predicted that this 12 months’s sale can be one other record-breaker, with a forecast of $14 billion {dollars} in gross sales.

However Amazon’s self-proclaimed buyer celebration comes at a value. Whereas Prime members should purchase items with the convenience of some clicks year-round, getting these thousands and thousands of merchandise to reach at their doorsteps in only a day or two is way extra intensive — and even harmful, as analysis and investigations into the corporate present — for the warehouse staff and supply drivers that Amazon employs and depends on. The pace and scale is worse on Prime Day, when much more shoppers are shopping for issues.

Employees have lengthy been vocal concerning the dangers they face on the job to maintain up with shopper calls for. On July 15, the eve of Prime Day, a gaggle of former and present Amazon staff confirmed as much as the company’s New York Metropolis workplace to ship tales from staff about accidents and deaths on the job and to request a gathering with the vp of Amazon’s International Office Well being and Security, Sarah Rhoads.

Audio system shared their experiences of getting harm, being overworked, and being denied staff’ compensation. One of many banners held up by staff learn, “Similar-day supply, lifetime of damage.”

It shouldn’t shock anybody that working in a warehouse for lengthy hours will be grueling, tiresome work. However the frequency at which Amazon staff are harm on the job — with accidents starting from musculoskeletal problems developed from repetitive, uncomfortable actions and heavy lifting to damaged bones — just isn’t the trade customary.

Kat Cole, a employee at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and an organizer with the Democratic Reform Caucus of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), says that no matter what time of 12 months it’s, working a shift at one in all Amazon’s warehouses is troublesome. However throughout the week of the Prime Day gross sales, the stress is up.

“You’ve gotten individuals respiratory down your neck,” Cole instructed Vox. That elevated quantity of labor places stress on staff and results in extra accidents, she added. She’s no stranger to accidents herself, even exterior of Prime Day and different massive gross sales weeks. “I’m going dwelling with not less than one big black and blue bruise on my legs, not less than as soon as every week.”

She says her coworkers have suffered from quite a lot of accidents and diseases whereas on the job: concussions, slipped discs, a sprained wrist, a damaged ankle.

Luke Cianciotto, an Amazon supply driver within the northern Chicago space, says the elevated workload doesn’t simply embrace extra deliveries. To accommodate for the inflow of labor on Prime Day, he says extra drivers are employed main as much as it, and extra veteran drivers are tasked with coaching them.

“What finally ends up taking place is you place these drivers on the highway, setting them up for failure,” Cianciotto instructed Vox. “They do a nasty job. And so they don’t deserve that.”

Whereas Cianciotto and his fellow supply drivers have been on strike for the final three weeks, his expertise with Prime Day previously consists of drivers working late into the night time, delivering tons of upon tons of of packages that fill their vans “wall to wall, flooring to ceiling.”

On a mean week for full-time Amazon warehouse staff, shifts will be anyplace between 10 to 12 hours. Cole stated that in weeks with elevated shopper demand from occasions like Prime Day, it’s widespread for Amazon to schedule “obligatory further time” — further hours or days added on to staff’ shifts to help with these surges, on high of this already demanding schedule.

With Prime Day being in the midst of July, some Amazon staff aren’t simply working beneath further stress — they’re working by extreme warmth, too, with temperatures rising as excessive as 85 to 90 levels Fahrenheit within the warehouse. On the JFK8 facility, Cole and her fellow union organizers have taken it upon themselves at hand out Gatorade and ice pops to her coworkers earlier than they begin their shifts. Cole says Amazon will put up indicators reminding people who the corporate cares and to take breaks. Amazon can even attempt to “lighten the temper,” Cole says, with novelties like DJs or providing lemonade. However she says that’s not what staff want.

“They want the warehouse to be cooler, they want safer working situations, they should know that they’ll take these breaks once they want them with out penalty or retaliation,” Cole stated. “That’s what we want.”

In at the moment’s market, firms are competing with Amazon by providing their personal model of Prime Day gross sales and fast supply dates. However even with rising competitors from the likes of Goal and Walmart, Amazon remains to be one of many leaders within the pack of e-commerce giants — and that features main in office accidents.

In April 2021, the corporate printed a letter from then-CEO Jeff Bezos about its dedication to being “Earth’s Most secure Place to Work.” Only a month later, the corporate introduced its well being and security program known as WorkingWell, with a aim to chop its recordable incident price (RIR) — or how usually accidents or sickness happen within the office per 100 full-time staff — in half by 2025.

When the announcement was made, the RIR was 7.6 per 100 full-time staff, in accordance with Amazon’s most up-to-date annual security report. Amazon would wish to cut back its incident price by not less than 10 p.c annually so as to slash the RIR by half. In 2022, the RIR was 6.7, a discount of 11.8 p.c from the earlier 12 months, showing to be on observe.

However one report launched this previous Might from the Strategic Organizing Heart (SOC), a coalition of labor unions, challenges Amazon’s self-report. In its evaluation of information from the Occupational Security and Well being Administration (OSHA), the middle discovered that in 2022, there have been 6.9 accidents for each 100 full-time staff, in comparison with 7.9 accidents in 2021. That’s an damage discount of 12.7 p.c in Amazon services, which incorporates warehouses, logistics, and supply services. Whereas these numbers are barely totally different from those present in Amazon’s security report, that’s nonetheless a notable lower. However in 2023, SOC present in its report that these numbers solely fell to six.5 accidents per 100 full-time staff — a discount of 5.8 p.c, just a bit over half of what it must common annually.

SOC researchers additionally famous that whereas these numbers fell from 2021 to 2023, accidents that required staff to be reassigned to lighter duties elevated, whereas accidents that necessitated shedding time at work decreased. There are two methods to interpret this: one being that Amazon has taken steps to meaningfully cut back extreme accidents that may require an absence from work. The opposite chance is that Amazon has shifted staff into lighter duties to maintain them working when they need to be resting and recovering from their accidents, which is deceptive and places staff prone to injuring themselves once more.

The latter is what SOC has claimed Amazon is doing. Amazon’s personal reasoning just isn’t too removed from this assertion: In its 2022 annual security report, the corporate stated that one of many foremost drivers of decreasing the variety of accidents that required time away from work was its “Return to Work” program, permitting staff to “proceed to work whereas recovering from work-related accidents or diseases.”

Cole — who was born with just one hand and makes use of a prosthetic arm — has skilled the push again to work quickly after an damage. As soon as throughout a shift, she injured her hand and went to AmCare, Amazon’s in-house first support clinic. “I used to be in numerous ache,” Cole stated. After wrapping her hand up, administration instructed her to return again to work. “I stated, ‘Pay attention, I’ve one hand. I dwell with this hand. And it’s injured proper now. I’m not going again on the ground to injure it additional.’”

The SOC report additionally discovered that there have been greater than 38,300 recordable accidents at Amazon services in 2023 alone, with 94 p.c of the accidents recognized by SOC as critical — which means staff had been both positioned on lighter work duties or compelled to overlook work completely. It additionally discovered that Amazon’s critical damage price was greater than twice as excessive as non-Amazon warehouses.

Accidents change into far more widespread throughout occasions like Prime Day and different massive gross sales, too. The week of Prime Day 2023, there have been 1,066 recorded circumstances of significant accidents at Amazon services, in accordance with the SOC report — the best variety of accidents recorded all 12 months, and much above the typical of 691 accidents per week. These circumstances represented a 48 p.c enhance in accidents from the earlier week, and had been adopted intently by circumstances recorded on Cyber Monday (1,015 critical accidents) and Prime Large Offers Day (898 critical accidents).

In an e mail to Vox, Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel known as the SOC report “deceptive,” emphasizing that the switch-up between charges and uncooked numbers builds a “false narrative” and that the report ought to begin at 2019, which might point out a discount to accidents by 28 p.c. “The actual fact is, there are way more individuals working within the buildings throughout these instances and extra complete hours labored by these staff,” she wrote.

Moreover, the Senate Well being, Schooling, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee launched a yearlong investigation into Amazon’s labor practices. In response to the Washington Submit, an interim report, led by committee chair Senator Bernie Sanders, discovered that just about 45 out of 100 staff had been injured throughout the week of Prime Day in 2019, and accidents peaked once more throughout different vacation gross sales.

Amazon, which had cooperated with the investigation, pushed again on Senator Sanders’s preliminary report through an e mail to Vox, saying it “ignores our progress and paints a one-sided, false narrative utilizing solely a fraction of the data we’ve supplied.”

The HELP Committee just isn’t the one federal investigation that’s discovered Amazon to have troubling questions of safety. From January 2023 to August 2023, a number of investigations from OSHA discovered that Amazon uncovered staff to well-known ergonomic hazards, like lifting packages up and down continuously, dealing with heavy objects, and bending and twisting in awkward positions, all for hours at a time. “Amazon’s working strategies are creating hazardous work situations and processes, resulting in critical employee accidents,” stated assistant secretary for occupational security and well being Doug Parker in a February 2023 press launch.

OSHA additionally discovered that when Amazon staff had been injured, the corporate failed to supply therapy. In a single information launch from OSHA, the company wrote that “not less than six staff with head accidents and 4 with again accidents didn’t obtain well timed, needed medical care.” Amazon disagreed with OSHA’s characterizations and appealed them.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which has gained just one election with the employees of Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, has made secure working situations one in all its main targets in a primary contract. Nevertheless, Amazon nonetheless refuses to acknowledge the union and, in flip, has made no motion on its aspect to bargaining a collective settlement. There’s additionally been battle inside the union on how one can finest carry Amazon to the bargaining desk and arrange different warehouses.

However in June, the ALU voted to affiliate with the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters — a strong union with sources that might assist change the tides for the employees of JFK8 and different Amazon services. That very same month, the New York State Meeting handed the Warehouse Employee Damage Discount Act, which now sits on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk.

Amazon has repeatedly rejected claims that it’s not meaningfully working to enhance office security. However even when we take it at its phrase, the information reveals that it nonetheless has a protracted approach to go earlier than it will possibly name itself “Earth’s Most secure Place to Work.”

Replace, July 17, 6 pm ET: This story, printed July 17, has been up to date to incorporate statements from Amazon. It additionally clarifies that the interim report was from Sanders alone, not the HELP committee at massive.