Recent reports reveal that the injury rates at Amazon’s warehouses in the US are way above the industry average—three times more. The American multinational e-commerce company has about 110 warehouses across the nation. As required by the law, the Company had submitted reports— to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a workplace safety agency of the United States Department of Labour—which revealed that on an average, workers were absent from work for about 64 days due to workplace injury.
It appears that safety incidents and injuries are under-recorded. Based on accounts by workers who happened to be present at one of Amazon’s California warehouses, during a gas leak, it has been brought to light that the Company did not stop operations despite 911 instructions to evacuate the building. Apparently, workers were told to use personal time if they wished to leave.
Amazon, however, claims these allegations are baseless and inaccurate, saying it stopped operations for an hour and a half and had also shifted workers to a room away from the leak. The Company also claims that its fulfilment centres are safe and that these allegations about unsafe working conditions are inaccurate and unfairly based on certain injury recordings.
Another investigative report based on injury recordings from about 23 Amazon warehouses across the US reveals that the rates of serious injuries at its locations were more than double the industry average.
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