Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and 13 different Democratic US senators have a message for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos: Change your online business
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and 13 different Democratic US senators have a message for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos: Change your online business practices, or else.
In a public letter addressed to Bezos Friday, the senators urged Amazon to “overhaul [the] profit-at-all-costs tradition at your organization” and implement modifications on the on-line retail big. Additionally they need Amazon to publish data of great employee accidents.
“Amazon’s dismal security file signifies a higher concern for earnings than on your personal employees’ security and well being,” the letter learn.
The letter referenced security data from Amazon’s warehouse community that appeared to point out higher-than-average damage charges, even for the warehousing {industry}. These charges had been initially disclosed in a November article from the Middle for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal group that was published in the Atlantic. Amazon argued on the time that the damage charges mirrored its aggressiveness in recording accidents, and a spokesperson reiterated that stance in a press release on Monday.
The letter comes at a time when politicians, activists, and a few of Amazon’s personal staff have referred to as Amazon out for the tempo of labor and labor circumstances inside its warehouse and delivery networks. The criticism has grow to be more and more noteworthy as Amazon has expanded its reach into so many aspects of American life, from on-line retail to leisure to the supply of groceries and prescribed drugs. Alongside the way in which, Bezos, the world’s richest man, has grow to be a goal for Warren and Sanders, who body him and his riches for example of capitalism gone awry.
“Nothing is extra vital to us than the protection and well-being of our staff,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Cheeseman stated. “OSHA is on the file as saying that underreporting of accidents is an industry-wide downside, and firms do that to maintain their charges low — a former assistant secretary of OSHA estimated that 50 % or extra of extreme accidents go unreported. Amazon does the other; we take an aggressive stance on recording accidents irrespective of how massive or small. The invitation stays open for any of the Senators to come back take a tour — final 12 months over 300,000 folks toured an Amazon success middle and we respect that they took the time to study the details first-hand.”
Cheeseman confirmed to Recode that a number of the senators who signed the letter haven’t taken Amazon up on touring one of its fulfillment centers. She declined to specify what number of or which of them.
The letter, whose signatories additionally included Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Kamala Harris (D-CA), included seven different requests. One was to “cut back employees’ quotas and velocity necessities,” and one other requested Amazon to “stop together with rest room breaks as a ‘day off job,’” stemming from allegations that some Amazon workers have had to relieve themselves in bottles so their efficiency doesn’t undergo.
A minimum of one of many requests — “Guarantee employees … have a assured method to elevate security and well being considerations” — seems to be one which Amazon already affords. On a go to to an Amazon success middle final 12 months, I noticed an enormous TV display — referred to as the Voice of Affiliate board — on which employees anonymously offered suggestions to administration. A kind of items of suggestions, highlighted in an episode of our Land of the Giants podcast about Amazon, was a employee telling administration that they checked themself out of the hospital as a result of they didn’t have somebody to fill in for them. Cheeseman stated these boards, whether or not digital screens or old-school whiteboards, are current in all Amazon warehouses.
The senators need a response by February 21.
Information of the letter comes as Amazon’s head of communications and coverage, Jay Carney, went on the offensive in a New York Times op-ed on Monday. Within the piece, Carney argued that the corporate’s critics ought to acknowledge that “Amazon is doing many good issues — for the economic system, and for American employees.” Carney cited Amazon’s 2018 move to raise its minimum pay to $15 an hour in addition to its Profession Selection program, which “prepays as much as 95 % of tuition and charges — making it nearly free for workers to study new abilities.”
He didn’t cite Amazon employee security data.