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Released by the majority staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee late Sunday night, Dec. 15, the report claims Amazon’s intense focus on productivity has led to unsafe working conditions.
The Senate report outlines how Amazon’s warehouse workers face high rates of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and other injuries caused by repetitive tasks and demanding quotas.
It accuses Amazon of knowingly exposing employees to these risks, citing internal documents that show company leaders were aware of the physical toll of their metrics but failed to take sufficient action to mitigate the dangers.
"Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has more money than could be spent in a million lifetimes," Senator Bernie Sanders wrote in a statement on X. "Why then does his company force workers to meet impossible quotas and treat them as disposable when they are injured? To Amazon, long-term pain and disability is just the cost of doing business."
In response, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said, “Sen. Sanders’ report is wrong on the facts and weaves together out-of-date documents and unverifiable anecdotes to create a pre-conceived narrative that he and his allies have been pushing for the past 18 months."
Nantel added that Amazon is making "meaningful progress on safety – improving our recordable incident rates by 28 percent in the US since 2019, and our lost time incident rates (the most serious injuries) by 75 percent.
"Despite that, and the fact that Sen. Sanders approached this process with a pre-conceived narrative, we’ve cooperated with Sen. Sanders and his staff throughout this investigation, providing thousands of pages of documents and other information.
"We’ve also repeatedly asked Sen. Sanders to visit one of our facilities so he can see our working conditions firsthand. Unfortunately, these invitations have gone unanswered. We encourage anyone who actually wants to understand the facts to read our annual safety report or come visit one of our facilities.”
Click here to read the committee's report on the committee investigation.
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