Injury Data Shows Amazon Jobs Are More Dangerous Than Walmart and UPS - Vice
Amazon's grip on the U.S. economy has perhaps never been greater than now. In 2020, the online retail giant capitalized on the massive uptick in demand for online shopping—seeing its sales skyrocket by 39 percent. Meanwhile, CEO Jeff Bezos is now worth $200 billion.
But all of this growth has a dark side. A new report released Tuesday by the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of some of the country's biggest labor unions, whose findings were confirmed in a separate analysis by the Washington Post, indicates that Amazon's obsession with efficiency and customer satisfaction has come at a steep cost to the workers who fulfill and deliver orders to Amazon customers: rampant and severe workplace injuries.
In 2020, Amazon workers were severely injured more than 24,000 times, at twice the rate of the rest of the warehouse industry nationwide, according to federal data analyzed in the report.
The report, which analyzes data submitted by Amazon to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) between 2017 and 2020, found that Amazon significantly outpaces its biggest competitors in terms of workplace injuries, including Walmart and UPS.
Amazon's grip on the U.S. economy has perhaps never been greater than now. In 2020, the online retail giant capitalized on the massive uptick in demand for online shopping—seeing its sales skyrocket by 39 percent. Meanwhile, CEO Jeff Bezos is now worth $200 billion.
But all of this growth has a dark side. A new report released Tuesday by the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of some of the country's biggest labor unions, whose findings were confirmed in a separate analysis by the Washington Post, indicates that Amazon's obsession with efficiency and customer satisfaction has come at a steep cost to the workers who fulfill and deliver orders to Amazon customers: rampant and severe workplace injuries.
In 2020, Amazon workers were severely injured more than 24,000 times, at twice the rate of the rest of the warehouse industry nationwide, according to federal data analyzed in the report.
The report, which analyzes data submitted by Amazon to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) between 2017 and 2020, found that Amazon significantly outpaces its biggest competitors in terms of workplace injuries, including Walmart and UPS.
