Sanders highlights Amazon 'corporate greed,' warehouse injuries ahead of Prime Day

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday called out the "corporate greed" at Amazon, releasing an investigative report ahead of the company's Prime Day sale that found nearly half of its on-site workers were injured during the same event in 2019.

According to the interim report — released Monday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which Sanders chairs — more than 10 injuries per 100 workers were reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) during the week of Amazon's 2019 Prime Day week, more than double the industry average.

But looking at Amazon's total injury rate, including ones the company is not required to report to OSHA, the report found just under 45 injuries per 100 workers.

The HELP panel report, which follows a year-long investigation into Amazon's labor conditions, was released a day ahead of this year's Prime Day. The two-day discount event is available for Amazon Prime members and runs Tuesday through Wednesday. This year marks the 10th Prime Day event.

“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,” Sanders said in a statement Tuesday. “Despite making $36 billion in profits last year and providing its CEO with over $275 million in compensation over the past three years, Amazon continues to treat its workers as disposable and with complete contempt for their safety and wellbeing. "

The report featured interviews with more than 100 Amazon workers over the past year.

"These workers not only confirmed that the company sets unsustainable productivity requirements and that serious injuries are common, they also told Committee staff that Amazon’s busiest periods — Prime Day and the holiday season — are by far the most dangerous," the report stated.

While receiving a significantly higher number of orders during Prime Day and the holiday season, Amazon requires warehouse workers to "move faster" and to work longer and additional shifts in what the company calls "mandatory extra time," employees told the committee.

Some said that Amazon skirts or ignores "critical safety protocols," the report said.

In a statement to The Hill, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said employees' safety and health "is and always will be our top priority," and "it comes before everything else we do."

The company has made "significant progress" to reduce its incident rate, defined as anything requiring more than basic first aid, by 28 percent and its lost time incident rate, including significant injures that require an employee to miss at least one day of work, by 75 percent, Nantel said.

"We’ve cooperated throughout this investigation, including providing thousands of pages of information and documents. But unfortunately, this report (which was not shared with us before publishing) ignores our progress and paints a one-sided, false narrative using only a fraction of the information we’ve provided," Nantel wrote.

"It draws sweeping and inaccurate conclusions based on unverified anecdotes, and it misrepresents documents that are several years old and contained factual errors and faulty analysis," she added.

Amazon further pushed back on the report's claims the company is not properly staffed for high shopping periods, calling them "not true," and that they "carefully plan and staff up for major events." Nantel pointed to Amazon's annual safety report to "truly understand the facts" over the company's record.

Sanders, who has chaired the HELP Committee since January 2023, has made combatting unfair labor practices a key focus of his work in the upper chamber.

In addition to Amazon, Sanders has repeatedly gone after the leadership at Starbucks over widespread allegations of illegal union-busting tactics at the coffee chain.

Earlier this year, he unveiled a bill to establish a standard four-day workweek in the United States without any reduction in pay.

The bill, over a four-year period, would lower the threshold required for overtime pay, from 40 hours to 32 hours. It would require overtime pay at a rate of 1.5 times a worker’s regular salary for workdays longer than 8 hours, and it would require overtime pay at double a worker’s regular salary for workdays longer than 12 hours.