Amazon has been making headlines for dangerous health and safety conditions at its warehouses for years and the company was forces to apologize earlier this year after falsely denying its employees had to urinate in plastic bottles. The Strategic Organizing Center, a labor union coalition, has now released a report which found that Amazon has a much higher warehouse injury rate than its competitors. It blames the company's obsessive focus on speed, stating that it comes at a huge cost to its workforce.
There were 6.5 injuries per 100 full time employees at American Amazon warehouses in 2020 compared to 4 injuries per 100 employees at all non-Amazon warehouses. The Amazon injury rate was also more than twice as high as Walmart, its largest retail competitor. The report states that not only are Amazon workers injured more frequently than elsewhere in the warehouse sector, they are also injured more severely. Last year, there were 5.9 serious injuries per 100 Amazon warehouse workers that resulted in them missing work completely, nearly 80 percent higher than the wider warehouse industry.
