The National Employment Law Project’s (NELP) Advocacy in Action series showcases our groundbreaking, collaborative advocacy work with partners nationwide to build a good-jobs economy for all workers.
This is how Amazon warehouse workers around the country have described the company’s surveillance and disciplinary practices—practices which have created a climate of fear for workers and led to astronomically high injury rates at its warehouses.
With the growth of e-commerce, warehouse jobs have expanded rapidly in the last decade, and Amazon—now the second largest private sector employer in the U.S.—leads the pack. However, this growth has also spurred an injury crisis for warehouse workers with thousands of U.S. workers seriously injured at the company’s facilities each year.
Innovative New State Laws
Now Amazon is finally being held accountable under innovative new quota transparency laws which have been championed by worker groups around the country.
Over the last four years, NELP has worked alongside partners to support campaigns for these bills through research, data analysis, policy development, narrative work, and public testimony. NELP has helped to develop stronger language for new bills as Amazon has devised new strategies to evade responsibility for its practices.
After years of campaigning, several coalitions of worker centers, unions, and advocates have succeeded in passing these laws in California, New York, Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon—and in introducing similar legislation in Congress and more than a dozen other states. The new policies require employers to disclose quotas and work speed data to workers and establish strong guardrails to protect workers who exercise these rights from employer retaliation.
The first of these laws, California’s AB 701, was spearheaded by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) and adopted in 2021. Since then, groups around the country including NELP; the Awood Center; the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union; the Strategic Organizing Center; ALIGN; International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the Athena Coalition; and others have worked to evolve and strengthen the model and pass additional laws. In addition, Minnesota and Washington State adopted further provisions to specifically address warehouse ergonomics in 2023, and in New York State, we worked together with a broad coalition to pass the Warehouse Worker Injury Reduction Act in December 2024, establishing ergonomic protections for warehouse workers.
Workers around the country have gained momentum in their organizing and mobilization efforts to hold Amazon accountable. Enforcement of these new laws is ramping up including in California where Amazon was fined 6 million dollars in a WWRC-led strategic enforcement action, coming out of the California Strategic Enforcement Project (CSEP), a community-agency partnership that NELP facilitates.
A Strong Federal Warehouse Worker Protection Act
Last May, a Federal Warehouse Worker Protection Act was introduced in Congress. Over the course of a year and a half, NELP worked closely with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Athena Coalition, and Senator Edward Markey’s office to develop strong language for a comprehensive bill. The bill includes the best of the state warehouse quota transparency laws, goes beyond those state bills to establish stronger federal protections for warehouse workers’ right to organize, and addresses warehouse worker health and safety via measures that only the federal government is empowered to take.
In addition to pushing for legislative changes, NELP, together with the Athena Coalition and other partners, provided key support to help advance an oversight investigation of Amazon by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The Senate’s report on the investigation cited our research on the nationwide injury crisis in warehouses.
NELP’s Research
Alongside these advocacy and campaign efforts, NELP’s original research has helped to shine a light on various dimensions of the human cost of Amazon’s growth around the country—from alarming increases in warehouse injuries in New York State, to racial inequities in Minnesota, to extreme worker turnover in California and nationally. We have documented Amazon’s outsized role in warehouse worker injuries nationwide, including Amazon’s disproportionate reliance on Black women workers and its grossly inadequate pay for workers.
As Amazon continues to become even larger and more dominant in the U.S. and around the world, NELP is committed to supporting workers and local communities to fight for good jobs, challenge Amazon’s outsized power, and hold the corporation accountable.
Resources
- Here are a couple of the groundbreaking NELP reports that have helped to shine a light on the human costs of Amazon’s growth:
- Our research on warehouse work has also been featured in national publications such as The Nation, VICE, and Fast Company and in influential local media outlets around the country including City and State, the Minnesota Star Tribune, the Seattle Times, and Connecticut Public Radio. Our research methodologies have been adapted by others, including the New York Times.
- These states have introduced warehouse quota transparency bills: Alaska – HB 88; Arizona – HB 2682/SB 1449; Connecticut – SB 412; Georgia – HB 16; Hawaii – S 2712; Illinois – HB2547; Massachusetts – HD 3709/SD 1807; Montana – HB 768; Nebraska – LB 502; New Jersey – A 3253; Rhode Island – HB 3720/SB 2478; South Dakota – SB 179; Texas HB 4394; and Virginia SB 685.
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About the Author
Irene Tung
Areas of expertise:
- Research
