Amazon Warehouse Injuries Account For Half of All Warehouse Injuries: 34,000 Serious Injuries In 2021 Alone

By Ana Dascalescu

Posted on April 12, 2022

Working in an Amazon warehouse is increasingly dangerous, according to a recent report calling the company an “injure machine”.

Despite employing just a third of warehouse workers in the US, Amazon warehouse injuries account for almost half (49%) of all warehouse injuries regardless of the employer.

In 2021, Amazon warehouse workers sustained 34,000 serious injuries, an alarming number that looks even worse when you take into account that the number of injuries also increased by 20 percent since the previous year.

The report is made by the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of four of the largest labour unions, and is a follow-up to last year’s similar report. Its findings then were corroborated independently by the Washington Post using OSHA data.

Motherboard contacted Amazon for its input and received the following statement:

“We hired tens of thousands of additional people to help us meet the unforeseen demand from COVID-19 and people turning to Amazon to help them safely get products and supplies during the pandemic. Like other companies in the industry, we saw an increase in recordable injuries during this time from 2020 to 2021 as we trained so many new people—however, when you compare 2021 to 2019, our recordable injury rate declined more than 13% year over year.

While we still have more work to do and won’t be satisfied until we are excellent when it comes to safety, we continue to make measurable improvements in reducing injuries and keeping employees safe, and appreciate the work from all of our employees and safety teams who are contributing to this effort.”