AMAZON PRIME DAYS TAKE MAJOR TOLL ON COMPANY’S WORKERS
Every year Amazon stages a Prime Day season, featuring big bargains for Amazon Prime members and big profits for Amazon. But what’s left unsaid is how much the speedup during those sale days takes its toll on the company’s workers.
A new report from the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions condemns the “outrageous injury levels during the Prime Day season. Amazon has a notorious record in violation of safety rules and worker injuries on the job. Normally, the ratio for the company in any given year is 10 for every hundred workers, more than twice the average for the industry. But during the Prime Days,. It jumps to 45 for every hundred, or almost half ofthe company’s warehouse workers.
“The incredibly dangerous working conditions at Amazon revealed in this investigation are a perfect example of the type of corporate greed that the American people are sick and tired of,” said Senator Sanders, chair of the Senate committee issuing the report.
“Despite making $36 billion in profits last year and providing its CEO with over $275 million in compensation over the past years,”said Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of UNI Global Union,“this report confirms what we have heard from workers for years. Amazon drives its workers to the brink of physical collapse, causing unbearable wear and tear on their bodies, resulting in injuries and long-term damage. It is well known that to work at Amazon is to work in a meat grinder. It doesn’t have to be this way, The call for change is even more urgent as the planet overheats and record-breaking temperatures become the norm. Instead of resisting its workers’ call for a union, Amazon should sit down and negotiate fair – and safe- conditions, which includes an end to unreasonable production demands and comprehensive measures to protect their employees from the consequences of heat.”
Sanders emphasized the issue of chronic understaffing at Amazon warehouses, particularly during peak periods like Prime Day. He argued that understaffing leads to longer hours and increased workloads that puts workers at a higher risk of injuries.
This is not the first time that Amazon has been criticized for putting workers at risk. Last month, UNI Global Union unveiled a new survey which states that Amazon warehouse and delivery workers in India are enduring intense pressure and unsafe conditions while struggling to support themselves with insufficient pay. The report last month published by UNI Global Union in partnership with the Amazon India Workers Association (AIWA), examining the working conditions of Amazon employees in India comes in the wake of widespread reports of dangerous conditions at Amazon during the summer heatwave in and around New Delhi.
