The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) aays workers at Amazon logistics centers suffered more than 34,000 "serious injuries" on the job last year, which is twice the rate of non-Amazon warehouses in the United States.
"After relaxing some disciplinary methods in the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, Amazon reinstated its control systems and production pressure in late 2020, and the injury rate rose sharply at the same time," SOC said.
The coalition stated that it was based on information provided by Amazon to OSHA, the federal agency in charge of workplace accident prevention. The group did not respond immediately to an AFP inquiry.
During the pandemic, Amazon expanded. According to the report, the company grew from 700 locations in the United States in 2020 to over 900 in 2021, and from more than 200,000 employees in 2017 to more than 560,000 in 2021.
Amazon revised its working conditions in that country in June 2021, extending the breaks for its employees in charge of preparing, shipping, and distributing packages.
The decision came after another damning report from the SOC, as well as a failed attempt to form a union at one of the company's warehouses in Alabama, which exposed cadences considered hellish by many workers.
However, "the injury rate at Amazon's warehouses increased by 20% between 2020 and 2021," according to the SOC.
Employees at the "JFK8" site in New York overwhelmingly voted in favor of forming a union at the end of March, for the first time at an Amazon warehouse in the United States.