June 27, 2024

The Honorable Bernie Sanders, Chair
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
428 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Chairman Sanders:

We, the undersigned organizations, urge the Committee to move forward Chair Bernie Sanders’ investigation into Amazon’s health and safety crisis by publishing your findings and recommendations. Publishing these findings will be a crucial first step toward holding the company accountable and demonstrating to workers and the public that the Senate is protecting quality jobs.

Amazon achieved its monopoly-level dominance by creating a high-turnover, high-pressure system that offloads the costs of injuries, low-pay, and job instability onto the public, workers, and their families. This is Amazon’s great innovation. Monitored at every minute, Amazon warehouse workers and drivers report running to the bathroom or even peeing in bottles, suffering from stress and fatigue, workplace injuries, and being driven to unemployment.

Not only does Amazon break workers’ bodies, the corporation also breaks workers’ banks. More than half of Amazon workers report experiencing food insecurity in the past month. The same study found that economic precarity is higher for those who are injured on the job.

Investigations by OSHA and Washington State have concluded that this high-pressure system violates the law, but Amazon continues to act with impunity. In 2023, Amazon warehouses had over 38,000 reported serious injuries, an injury rate double that of other warehouses. The actual injury rate is likely much higher. In a large national survey, 69% of Amazon warehouse workers reported that they took unpaid time off to recover from pain or exhaustion sustained on the job, and 41% reported being injured while working at an Amazon warehouse. While Amazon says it is taking steps to address the safety crisis, OSHA found that Amazon is underreporting injuries in multiple facilities and the company continues to fudge its numbers.

Amazon will soon be the largest private employer in the United States, and if lawmakers and regulators fail to take action, the company’s dangerous and extractive model will become the standard in warehousing, logistics, and retail. As other retailers and logistics companies implement similarly exploitative strategies, this dangerous trend will further degrade working conditions for tens of millions of people across the country. The result will be a punishing, untenable reality for workers in these important jobs.

Last year, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chair Senator Bernie Sanders announced an investigation into unsafe practices that Amazon employs across the country, and around the world. Given the high stakes of this investigation, we are eager to see progress on this vital work and hopeful that its findings will be released as soon as possible.

Since the last letter sent by the Athena Coalition to members of Congress requesting a hearing, Amazon’s worker safety crisis has only intensified. To address this crisis head-on, we urge you to publish the findings of your investigation before Amazon’s next peak period in mid-July. During these peak periods, Amazon pushes workers to do more faster, and as a result, workers are injured at higher rates.

We urge you to heed the call of the public, workers, and small businesses, to hold Amazon accountable once and for all. Thank you for your consideration, and your leadership. The public is looking to you to fulfill your mandate to serve the interests of everyday people.

Sincerely,

Athena Coalition
Action Center on Race and the Economy
ALIGN: The Alliance for a Greater New York
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice
Center for Popular Democracy
Center on Policy Initiatives
Demand Progress
Fight for the Future
For the Many
Good Jobs First
Grassroots Law and Organizing for Workers (GLOW)
Human Impact Partners
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Jobs With Justice
LAANE
Make the Road New Jersey
Missouri Workers Center
National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH)
National Employment Law Project
New York Communities for Change
OLÉ
Open Markets Institute
Oxfam America
People’s Collective for Environmental Justice
Philadelphia Jobs with Justice
Public Citizen
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project
Towards Justice
Turkopticon
United for Respect
Warehouse Worker Resource Center
Warehouse Workers for Justice
Worksafe