Unions: Amazon accounts for half of US warehouse injuries by 2021

Workers line up to vote for the union on March 25, 2022 at the Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, New York.

Nearly half of all workplace injuries in U.S. warehouses occurred by 2021 on Amazon, although the online trading company employs only a third of those paid, according to a report released Tuesday by a coalition of unions.

According to the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), workers at Amazon’s filling centers suffered more than 34,000 “serious injuries” in their workplace last year: more than twice as many as non-Amazon warehouses. Seattle Group.

“After easing some regulatory framework in the first months of the COVID-19 epidemic, Amazon restored its control and pressure systems to production by the end of 2020, while the injury rate increased significantly,” the SOC condemned. .

The Coalition said it relied on data provided by Amazon to OSHA, the federal agency accused of preventing workplace accidents. The team did not immediately respond to an AFP query.

The Amazon expanded during the Govit-19 epidemics. According to the report, the company will grow from about 700 locations in the United States by 2020 to more than 900 by 2021 and more than 200,000 employees in 2017 to more than 560,000 by 2021.

In June 2021, Amazon revised working conditions in the United States, widening the gaps for its employees working in packaging, shipping and distribution.

The decision follows another disastrous SOC report and an attempt to create a failed union at a company’s warehouse in Alabama. Both situations revealed working conditions that were considered hell by many employees.

Despite this, the SOC noted that “the injury rate at Amazon warehouses increased by 20% between 2020 and 2021”.

At the end of March, employees at the JFK8 site in New York voted overwhelmingly to form a union for the first time at the US Amazon warehouse.