In Blistering Senate Report, Bernie Sanders Says Amazon Ignored Warnings Over Employee Security

This week, a Senate committee helmed by famous populist firebrand Bernie Sanders printed a report accusing e-commerce big Amazon of getting fostered a working setting that’s harmful to its employees’ well being. Worse, the report claims that the corporate has been conscious that its inner insurance policies are harming its employees however that it has repeatedly chosen to disregard these harms for the sake of company revenue. Amazon has roundly rejected the report’s conclusions.

The report, which was produced by the Senate Committee on Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions, reveals that Amazon has carried out a variety of inner research designed to evaluate dangers to employee well being and security. These experiences, variously dubbed “Undertaking Elderwand” and “Undertaking Soteria,” finally discovered that the corporate’s quota system (during which employees are required to fulfill sure productiveness thresholds) and its deal with velocity (employees are pressured to finish duties shortly, the report claims) was driving employees to injure themselves. The experiences urged that Amazon calm down its quota necessities in order to chorus from harming its employees. Nevertheless, the New York Occasions writes that the corporate’s high executives finally “rejected the suggestions” from its internally commissioned experiences.

Certainly, the committee mentioned that it had discovered that “Amazon just isn’t solely conscious of the connection between velocity and accidents, but additionally that the corporate particularly rejected potential security enhancements, accepting accidents to its employees as the price of doing enterprise.” The report additional notes, “Extremely, whereas the corporate refuses to undertake” its personal “really helpful security enhancements, it additionally presents a deceptive narrative about its harm charges and claims its warehouses are far safer than they honestly are.”

The accidents in query appear to stem from employees having to copy repetitive bodily actions all through the workday, the report states. “Amazon forces employees to maneuver in unsafe methods and to repeat the identical actions a whole lot and 1000’s of occasions every shift, leading to extraordinarily excessive charges of musculoskeletal issues,” the report states, noting that whereas the corporate is “conscious that these repetitive actions—revamped 10- to 12-hour shifts—trigger musculoskeletal issues, the corporate refuses to take motion to guard employees.”

“Amazon’s refusal to guard employees is especially egregious given its unimaginable monetary assets,” the report notes, reminding readers that Amazon is the “sixth largest firm on the earth and the second-largest personal employer in the US” and that Jeff Bezos, the corporate’s founder, is the third richest man on the earth.

When reached for remark by Gizmodo, an Amazon spokesperson claimed that the report was primarily based on outdated info that Amazon had since discredited. “Senator Sanders’s report is mistaken on the information and weaves collectively out-of-date paperwork and unverifiable anecdotes to create a preconceived narrative,” an announcement offered by Amazon spokesman Steve Kelly reads. “The information are, our expectations for our workers are secure and cheap.”

“Regardless of that, and the truth that Sen. Sanders approached this course of with a pre-conceived narrative, we’ve cooperated with Sen. Sanders and his workers all through this investigation, offering 1000’s of pages of paperwork and different info,” the assertion continues. “We’ve additionally repeatedly requested Sen. Sanders to go to certainly one of our amenities so he can see our working situations firsthand. Sadly, these invites have gone unanswered.”

Regardless of the corporate’s rebuttal to the report’s findings, the Occasions notes that the “findings within the Senate report are in line with investigations carried out by state and federal regulators in recent times.”