Amazon’s ‘Safe’ New Robot Won’t Fix Its Worker Injury Problem
SINCE AMAZON BEGAN bringing robots to its warehouses in 2014, company executives have repeatedly claimed that they improve worker safety. But company records obtained by Reveal showed that between 2016 and 2019 serious injuries occurred more often in Amazon warehouses with robots than those without them, suggesting that robots made employees less safe by causing managers to raise performance quotas. Analysis of filings with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) by The Washington Post found that in 2020, serious injuries were roughly twice as likely to occur in Amazon warehouses than those run by other companies. A separate analysis of OSHA data by labor union coalition the Strategic Organizing Center found the same pattern for 2021.
