UPS and Amazon Come Under Fire for Under-Reporting Employee Injuries
E-commerce retailers have made it possible to place orders easily and receive items quickly. Whether you’re sending a package to Ireland, the third-biggest island in Europe, or buying an item for someone who lives five minutes away from you, it’s now expected for those parcels to arrive in a matter of days. But with all this emphasis on speed and convenience comes the pressure to get the job done at any cost. And sometimes, the cost may be the health and safety of employees.
Amazon has been called out on numerous occasions for subpar working conditions. Back in November, more than 100 workers gathered outside the company’s new distribution center in Staten Island, New York to protest those working conditions. One analysis showed that the rate of worker injury there was three times the national average for warehouse worker incidents. Although less than 30% of all warehouses are efficient, it’s clear that Amazon has gone to extreme lengths to increase its efficiency. In fact, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health included Amazon as part of its 2019 “Dirty Dozen” list of the most dangerous employers in the United States.
But Amazon isn’t the only company drawing attention for its deplorable work conditions and subsequently high injury rates. According to the Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis, in 2015 alone there were 3,919 railroad accidents and incidents. But a popular transport organization, alongside Amazon, is in hot water recently. The United Parcel Service, more commonly known as UPS, is now being scrutinized for creating a “culture of fear,” according to a recent Bloomberg report. One major injury that occurred at a UPS branch in New Hampshire last year prompted a report that alleged that UPS had failed to maintain a safe workplace and failed to contact emergency services following the accident. Moreover, managers involved in the incident were accused of endangering the injured employee’s life due to their handling of the event.
And according to interviews and lawsuits obtained by Bloomberg, this is no isolated incident; workers claim that management often from contacting medical personnel and regularly retaliates against those who do report accidents. After the media outlet ran a story pertaining the UPS’s documented violations for blocking workplace exits in March 2019, a number of UPS workers contacted the publication to inform reporters about workplace incidents and threats of being fired if injuries were reported. Workers’ compensation law reforms that were passed in 2004 make it more difficult for injured workers to obtain medical treatment and compensation benefits, but it’s clear that many workers are choosing to keep quiet and not even attempt to file a claim in order to keep their jobs.
It would seem that UPS is feeling the heat from Amazon. In an effort to keep up with their competitor, UPS could be pushing their workers to the limit.
Explained David Michaels, former assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, to Bloomberg: “Amazon does many things UPS does not, but one of Amazon’s activities that competes with UPS is package delivery. Amazon uses contractors and gig economy workers, and of course, these workers have much fewer protections. This puts pressure on UPS, which then pressures its workers, because the workers at Amazon are paid less and pushed by algorithm to work more quickly.”
Currently, there are more than 40 federal and state cases being brought against UPS that allege company managers discouraged employees from filing injury reports. And while OSHA has ordered UPS to compensate at least one former employee who was wrongfully terminated and then harassed for his refusal to work in violation of federal safety regulations, there’s no guarantee that the company will do right by its more than 399,000 currently employed workers. Earlier this year, UPS Chief Operating Officer Jim Barber had announced the company would hire 100,000 more employees during the holiday season to accommodate the upwards of 30 million packages that would be delivered each day. But while those workers are integral to the success of UPS, many would-be employees might be better off finding alternative employment — particularly if they don’t want to be hurt on the job.
