Amazon employees say unrealistic quotas threaten their safety in the workplace

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Amazon is facing backlash after thousands of employees say they’re working in harsh conditions.

Several of those warehouse workers traveled to Capitol Hill to ask lawmakers like Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts to help them make changes.

“I’ve been injured twice because of Amazon’s total blatant disregard for the human factor of their work force,” said Kevin Williams. “I go home in pain, I come back in pain; they don’t utilize the safety equipment saying that the machines are broken.”

Amazon brought in over $570 billion dollars last year according to their financial records. The e-commerce giant hired thousands of workers to keep up with the with their growing demand but employees like Williams say the cost of that demand is too high.

“They’re push for harder quotas with no regard has to stop,” said Williams. “They ask for so much and give so little and we know they have the power to do more and that’s why we’re fighting back.”

Lawmakers like Senator Markey now addressing these concerns with a bill intended to protect all warehouse workers.

Amazon has perfected a punishing quota system that pushes worker beyond their limits,” said Markey. “They use surveillance to watch workers every move, they set requirements for how many packages workers have to scan without telling them what those requirements are.”

Markey, who shared stories of his grandfather and dad being abused in warehouse positions - said Amazon’s quota requires employees to scan at least 300 items per hour. He now introducing the Warehouse Worker Protection Act.

“This would ban quotas that make it impossible for employees to use the bathroom or take breaks and require companies to tell workers what quotas they have to meet and prohibit 24/7 surveillance or those that violate health and safety laws.”

I reached out to Amazon about these claims, which they denied adding that they’ve spent $1 billion dollars in improving safety laws.

A spokesperson for the company sent me this:

Safety:

Since 2019, our recordable incident and lost time rates have improved by 24% and 77% respectively in the United States.
Since 2019, we’ve invested more than $1 billion in technologies, resources, training, and programs to further our safety efforts.
In 2024, we’ve allocated more than $750 million to continue these investments.
Claims that our injury rate is double the industry average are misleading: Many large companies that should be included in these comparisons —companies like Walmart, Target and Costco—report almost all of their injuries under different OSHA reporting categories.
As a result, these claims actually represents only a small subset of the companies that have businesses similar to ours.
There are no firm guidelines on what reporting category a company must report data to OSHA through.

Performance:

It’s a common misperception that Amazon has fixed quotas, but we do not. Our Time Logged In policy assesses whether employees are actually working while they’re logged in at their station.
Our Time Logged In policy assesses whether employees are actually working while they’re logged in at their station.
Our employees can see their own performance at any time and can talk to their manager if they’re having trouble finding the information.
This way, if there is ever an instance where an employee may be struggling, we can work with them to understand their challenges, and provide them additional training or coaching to help them be successful.

And again – here are the comments from the Chamber and the CWS. These are not indicative of Amazon’s views, but passing along for context.

Coalition for Workplace Safety

The next step for the Warehouse Worker Protection Act is a hearing before the Sente committee with jurisdiction over employment rules.

Attendee panel closed

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