Amazon ignored internal injury studies, Senate probe claims

for years said workers and contractors at Amazon warehouses were injured at unusually high rates, often attributed to the fast pace of work. On Sunday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee released an investigation alleging that Amazon’s internal research reached similar conclusions — and then ignored them. reported.

The Senate committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, released its 160-page book which, among other things, details the results of two internal Amazon initiatives aimed at investigating worker injuries: Project Elderwand and Project Soteria. The first identified the upper limit of repetitive motions that workers could perform before a significant risk of injury occurred, and noted that current quotes were above this percentage. The latter shows a relationship between work speed and injury. Both studies recommended reducing the pace of work, but executives chose not to.

Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said Sanders’ report used what she called “outdated documents” (the studies were conducted in 2020 and 2021). She went on to say that Amazon’s work environment has improved recently and that a Washington state judge has dismissed allegations that Amazon requires its employees to work in unsafe environments.

Amazon was last year by OSHA in half a dozen warehouses for “failure to ensure worker safety.” Ann by the Washington Post in 2021. found that Amazon warehouse workers are seriously injured at a rate nearly twice that of the warehouse industry as a whole; echoed similarly by Reveal since 2019