ATLANTA, May 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Amazon has been a corporate juggernaut in the U.S. over the past 15 years, becoming the nation’s largest e-commerce retailer. In just 4 years, its sales have exceeded $100 billion annually, and its income is more than $33 billion. While the company prides itself on its speed and sales growth, the business’s success comes at a cost—injuries and unsafe working conditions.
Amazon is under fire for the way it treats its warehouse workers—and for good reason. For a company that strives to focus on customer service, Amazon seems to have forgotten that its warehouse workers are the 1st line of service for those customers.
The number of workers who have been hurt on the job is staggering. Amazon has more than 575,000 employees in the U.S., and in 2020, 6.5 percent of those workers were injured on the job. That's over 37,000 people injured in the course of their work for Amazon in a single year.
In an effort to increase production, Amazon has introduced robots to a few of its warehouses. One would think that using robots would reduce the number of injuries workers experience, but the opposite is true. There are more injuries in warehouses that utilize robots than those without robots.
Amazon attempts to reduce the number of workers’ compensation claims by using onsite nurses and industrial clinics and altering work capacity. This is not done with their workers' health in mind, however, but with the warehouse's injury record in mind.
Gerber & Holder recently litigated a case for a client who was an Amazon worker who twisted her knee while sorting items. The video camera in the warehouse was partially obstructed, and there was no clear view of our client being hurt. Amazon's response to this worker's claim was to move slowly. It took 15 months for this case to resolve in our client’s favor.
About Gerber and Holder
With over 50 years of combined experience in work injury cases, experienced Atlanta work injury attorneys Ben Gerber and Tom Holder represent Georgia workers injured due to unsafe working conditions.
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