Working conditions at Amazon warehouses will be front and center starting Monday during a first-of-its-kind trial, as the company appeals Washington state Occupational Safety and Health Administration citations for violations at some of its Seattle-area warehouses.
A trial before the Washington Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, expected to stretch over the next few months, is the first for the company over an OSHA violation — and could lead the way for other states that want to hold Amazon
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accountable for worker safety, worker advocates say.
This month and next, the state’s Department of Labor and Industries plans to call several expert witnesses and Amazon workers, according to a witness list filed with the appeals board. From September to October, Amazon will call witnesses including its own experts, managers and employees, its witness list shows. The hearings will be available to watch on the appeals board’s website.
Amazon’s appeal is related to four citations issued to the tech and retail giant in the past couple of years for violations at three different warehouses in Washington, in Dupont, Sumner and Kent. The violations for which Amazon was cited by the state’s Department of Labor and Industries involve ergonomic concerns about warehouse workers’ duties “that are causing or likely to cause serious injury,” according to the citations. Those duties include heavy lifting by hand, repetitive motions and other movements that could cause back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders.
In its 2022 opposition to Amazon’s request for a stay of abatement of the alleged violations, the Labor and Industries department said Amazon’s Kent warehouse “has some of the highest injury rates of any warehouse in the U.S.” The department also noted that the case is likely to be litigated and could end up before the Washington Supreme Court, and that “Amazon is requesting that it be allowed to do almost nothing to lower its injury rates over the course of the several years this matter is likely to be in the court system.”
“We look forward to showing that L&I’s allegations are inaccurate and don’t reflect the reality of safety at Amazon,” Maureen Vogel, a spokesperson for the company, said this week. Vogel said the company has improved its recordable-injury rates at its sites in Dupont and Kent.
Proposed monetary penalties for violations at each of the warehouses total in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars — a drop in the bucket for Amazon, which has a market capitalization of almost $1.4 trillion.
But Eric Frumin, the health and safety director for the Strategic Organizing Center, an alliance of three labor unions, said Monday during a news briefing about the upcoming trial that “remedy for workers is the focus … and the most important repercussion.”
“Amazon needs to fix the problems” so workers can continue to work for the company safely, Frumin said.
The violations listed in the citations are similar to violations the federal OSHA has asked Amazon to address in several other warehouses around the U.S. this year.
Last year, OSHA opened a multistate investigation into Amazon’s warehouse conditions after a referral by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, and issued citations against the company as a result of those probes. In December, OSHA cited the company for record-keeping violations. In January and February, the agency issued citations for violations at seven Amazon warehouses in five different states, including accusations of unsafe working conditions and ergonomic practices.
From the archives (January 2023): Amazon cited for warehouse working conditions ‘designed for speed but not safety’
The SOC has repeatedly brought attention to injury rates at Amazon warehouses. In April, the organization issued a report that showed worker serious-injury rates at Amazon warehouses in 2022 were double those of other warehouse workers, a finding the company disputed. Amazon’s own numbers showed improvements in lost-time incident rates — or “the most serious injuries that require someone to take time off,” according to the company — from 2019 to 2022, it said.
Meanwhile, Amazon warehouse working conditions have also caught the attention of officials in Washington, D.C. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, launched an investigation last month and asked current and former workers and others to share their experiences related to the company’s warehouse working conditions.
From the archives (February 2023): Amazon gets 3 more warehouse-safety citations as OSHA warns company to ‘take these injuries seriously’
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