Warehouse workers at Amazon don’t appear to be benefiting from the company’s recent pledge to improve safety.
According to a recent report, serious injuries among Amazon warehouse workers were up 15 percent in the last year.
This comes despite the fact that Amazon invested some $300 million into safety programs.
Business Insider reports that a third of US warehouse workers are employed by Amazon, yet they account for 50 percent of injuries.
The news outlet adds that serious injury rates were 30 percent higher at Amazon’s highly automated warehouses, versus those without robotics.
In 2021, Amazon pledged to become “Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”
At the time, then-CEO Jeff Bezos said roughly 40% of worker injuries were due to repetitive motion and consisted of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) like sprains and strains.
He said Amazon needed to “invent solutions to reduce MSDs for new employees.”
