[Fact Check] Amazon Allegedly 'Deceives' Public, Worker Injuries Increased on Prime Day

Urian B., Tech Times 28 October 2020, 02:10 am

Dave Clark, the Amazon operations chief previously announced on Cyber Monday 2014 the opening of the Tracy, California warehouse. A few years later and with many allegations, Amazon has been able to grow from a $150 billion company to over $1 trillion in value with over 250,000 warehouse workers.

How Amazon handles publicity and the claims that they parade

The journey included senators filing letters to the company as well as workers leading walkouts over the said safety and health problems. According to Reveal News, Amazon has still continued its "unapologetic public relations campaign" as the company insists that they are good for their workers.

Jeff Wike, one of the two CEOs working under Bezos gave a statement to PBS FRONTLINE some time last december saying "they make the job safer." Amazon also states that the general injury rates remain flat or even go down during the buying frenzies like Amazon Day. Their statement to Business Insider notes that they are thankful to their "diligent record-keeping," they well know for a fact that the number of "recordable incidents" do not increase in number during peak.

Big reveal shows rise in injuries around peak seasons

Company records, however, from The Center for Investigative Reporting that include internal safety reports as well as weekly injury numbers coming from the nationwide network of fulfillment centers have shown that the company officials have actually profoundly misled both the public and the lawmakers with regards to its safety.

The reveal showed the weekly data from 2016 all the way to 2019 of over the 150 Amazon warehouses showing the brutal cost to Amazon workers and the "bald misrepresentation" that the company has then deployed in order to hide the general growing safety crisis.

The cases have increased based on presented data

Amazon usually points back towards the tens of millions it has invested in order to enhance its safety practices. However, the data shows that Amazon's injury rates have yet increased in the past four years. Back in 2019, there was a record of 14,000 cases of serious injuries (requiring either job restrictions or day offs).

The overall rate can be seen as 7.7 serious injuries for every 100 employees and was reportedly 33% higher in comparison to 2016 and also nearly double of the most recent industry standard.

For years, the given internal data show that the peak of these injuries happens on Amazon Prime Day as well as Cyber Monday, directly contradicting Amazon's own public claims. The two weeks got the highest rate of serious injuries throughout the entire 2019.

The safety protocols the company marked "Privileged & Confidential" back in 2018 aimed to lower the injury rate by at least 20% but instead, the rates just went up. 2019's goal was to decrease the injury rates by 5% but the rates still went up yet again.