Amazon Facing Severe Penalty For Failing To Keep Workers Safe In Multiple States
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) has charged Amazon with workplace safety violations at warehouses in Illinois, New York, and Florida.
Amazon was recently investigated by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). The OSHA inquiry was related to the health and safety of workers at multiple Amazon warehouse locations. The results of OSHA’s investigation culminated in Amazon facing serious employee safety violations.
An OSHA complaint should not be taken lightly. OSHA stands for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and not addressing its inquiries in a sufficient manner can lead to major financial penalties and possibly having an entire operation shut down either temporarily or in some cases permanently. This is the position that Amazon finds itself in currently.
The media has been reporting for years that employees of Amazon have been raising concerns about hazardous and unsafe working conditions in its warehouses. A specific concern includes the number of hours employees are sometimes forced to work which creates fatigue and could jeopardize the employee’s safety.
OSHA had made Amazon aware of an official employee complaint, and when the company was not able to satisfy them with their internal audit of the concerns, they sent in Federal Safety inspectors to investigate the validity of these claims. Those investigators have concluded that warehouse workers are being asked to twist, bend, and reach for items that puts them at a much higher risk for lower back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders and that this constitutes an unacceptable hazard for Amazon employees.
According to NPR, the Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health Administration Doug Parker said, “While Amazon has developed impressive systems to make sure its customers’ orders are shipped efficiently and quickly, the company has failed to show the same level of commitment to protecting the safety and wellbeing of its workers.” They found through their large-scale investigation into Amazon’s warehouse working conditions that the company failed to keep workers safe in Deltona, Florida, Waukegan, Illinois, and New Windsor, New York’s warehouse facilities. Those findings leave Amazon facing a total of $60,269 in proposed penalties being levied by OSHA due to the violation of the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
That clause requires employers to provide workplaces free from recognized safety hazards which OSHA is saying existed at specifically these three warehouse facilities. At these facilities, they observed that the DART rate (days away from work, medical job restrictions, or transfers) was double the industry average in the Illinois location, and it was triple in both the Florida and New York locations. At the Florida facility investigators also found that workers were at risk of being struck by falling materials that were unsafely stored at heights over 30 feet.
Amazon has a 15-day window to dispute these findings and according to NPR quoting Kelly Nantel an Amazon spokesperson, “We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously, and we strongly disagree with these allegations and intend to appeal.” She also presents the fact that the company’s injury rate has been reduced by 15% between 2019 and 2021.
However, just a month ago, OSHA cited Amazon for more than a dozen record-keeping violations, including failing to report injuries. That 15% decrease could be attributed to not reporting the injuries as opposed to them not occurring. If Amazon loses its appeal to OSHA, then it will be required to re-engineer its warehouse operation to comply with OSHA’s findings, which we estimate would cost the company millions of dollars.
The facts of the investigation are clear that the Amazon workers that have been raising this concern for quite a while are being validated. The good news for those employees is with OSHA being involved at this level means they should start seeing immediate improvements regarding the safety of the working conditions in their workplaces.
