Warehousing Pain: Amazon Worker Injury Rate Skyrockets with Company’s Rapid Expansion in New York State

64 Percent Increase in Injuries Reported as Amazon Doubles the Number of Facilities in the State Since January 2021

Key Findings

An analysis of newly released data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration shows:

• Massive increase in worker injuries – An analysis based on Amazon’s self-reported data reveals that injury rates jumped 64 percent at the company’s warehouse and logistics facilities in New York State from 2020 to 2021.[1] The rate increased from 5.5 injuries per 100 full-time equivalent workers (FTEs) in 2020 to 9.0 injuries per 100 FTEs in 2021. Nationally, Amazon injury rates increased 20 percent (6.6 to 7.9 injuries per 100 FTEs) during the same period, as a recent Strategic Organizing Center analysis shows.[2] Since January 2021, Amazon has expanded rapidly in New York, more than doubling the number of facilities in the state for a current total of 69.[3] In late 2020, Amazon reinstituted electronic monitoring–based disciplinary policies that had been suspended at the beginning of the pandemic, driving up the pace of work and likely resulting in more worker injuries.[4] Amazon’s 2021 total injury rate in New York (9.0 per 100 FTEs) is approximately equivalent to one injury for every 11 full-time workers.
• Overwhelming majority of injuries were of the most serious kind. Eighty-nine percent of injuries reported were cases so serious that workers could not continue performing their normal job duties and had to either change job duties or take time off work to recover.
• The rate for the most serious injuries at Amazon facilities is 40 percent higher than at non-Amazon facilities. In 2021, the total injury rate at Amazon warehousing and logistics facilities in New York State (9.0 per 100 FTEs) was 29 percent higher than at non-Amazon facilities (7.0 per 100 FTEs). The rate of the most serious injuries at Amazon warehousing and logistics facilities (8.0 per 100 FTEs) was 40 percent higher than at non-Amazon facilities in the state (5.7 per 100 FTEs).
• New York injury rate surges past the national Amazon average. In 2020, rates of the most serious injuries and total injury rates for New York Amazon warehouse and logistics workers were lower than the national Amazon averages, but in 2021 both measures surpassed those averages (see Figure 1). The rate of the most serious injuries for New York Amazon warehouse and logistics workers (8.0 per 100 FTEs) is 18 percent higher than the Amazon national average for that measure (6.8 per 100 FTEs). Similarly, the total injury rate for New York Amazon warehouse and logistics workers (9.0 per 100 FTEs) is 14 percent higher than the Amazon national average for total injuries (7.9 per 100 FTEs).
• Controversial upstate fulfillment center ranked first in the rate of most serious injuries among Amazon facilities in New York. The three facilities that ranked the highest for the rates of the most serious injuries among Amazon facilities in New York were ALB1 in Schodack/Castleton-on-Hudson (Rensselaer County), DRO2 in Greece (Erie County), and DBU1 in Tonawanda (Monroe County) (see Table 1). The Schodack/Castleton-on-Hudson facility reported a rate of 19.8 injuries of the most serious kind per 100 full-time equivalent workers, approximately equivalent to a stunning rate of one injury for every five full-time workers resulting in lost time or restricted duty. The facility was the first fulfillment center that Amazon built upstate and faced significant local opposition before it opened in 2020.[5] 

Special thanks to Eric Frumin (Strategic Organizing Center) and Patrick Young (Movement Catalyst) for their methodological contributions to this report.

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Endnotes

[1] Unless otherwise noted, all New York State injury rates reported in this brief are based on an analysis of OSHA Injury Tracking Application data, 2021 available at https://www.osha.gov/Establishment-Specific-Injury-and-Illness-Data.

[2] All national injury rates cited in this report come from “The Injury Machine: How Amazon’s Production System Hurts Workers”, Strategic Organizing Center, 2022, https://thesoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/The-Injury-Machine_How-Amazons-Production-System-Hurts-Workers.pdf

^[3] “Amazon Global Supply Chain and Fulfillment Center Network,” MWPVL International, https://www.mwpvl.com/html/amazon_com.html

[4] Strategic Organizing Center, 2022; “Amazon has resumed policies that penalize workers for taking too many breaks, just in time for Prime Day,” CNBC, Oct. 14, 2020: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/14/amazon-resumes-policy-that-dings-workers-for-taking-too-many-breaks.html; AMAZON.COM, INC. v. ATTORNEY GENERAL LETITIA JAMES, Case 1:21-cv-00767, Complaint, paragraphs 87-88; and, AMAZON.COM, INC. v. ATTORNEY GENERAL LETITIA JAMES, Case 1:21-cv-00767, Complaint, paragraph 92.

[5] Rick Karlin, “Massive Amazon fulfillment center opens in Schodack,” Times Union, September 9, 2020.  https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Massive-Amazon-distribution-center-opens-in-15554061.php#taboola-1