Advocacy groups push Sen. Bernie Sanders to share Amazon investigation details

Lauren Rosenblatt / The Seattle Occasions (TNS)

Congress is urgent Amazon to share extra details about its security file — from warehouses to supply drivers — however some employees’ rights advocacy teams say lawmakers aren’t transferring quick sufficient.

On Thursday, roughly one 12 months since Sen. Bernie Sanders launched a congressional investigation into Amazon’s warehouse working circumstances, greater than 30 advocacy teams despatched a letter to the Vermont lawmaker asking for a public launch of the findings.

Sanders requested Amazon warehouse employees final June to share their tales and the corporate to share details about its harm price, worker turnover, tempo of labor and in-house medical providers to deal with office accidents.

“Given the excessive stakes of this investigation, we’re wanting to see progress,” the advocacy teams wrote Thursday.

“If lawmakers and regulators fail to take motion, the corporate’s harmful and extractive mannequin will develop into the usual in warehousing, logistics and retail,” the letter continued. “The consequence can be a punishing, untenable actuality for employees in these necessary jobs.”

The teams hoped to get extra details about the investigation by mid-July, when Amazon’s annual Prime Day sale will imply a spike in orders and the potential for elevated strain on employees to maintain packages transferring via the warehouses.

Amazon disputed Sanders’ authentic allegations final June that the corporate’s warehouses are “one of the crucial harmful” locations to work. The corporate stated it has seen a decline in harm charges for 2 consecutive years, attributable to investments in coaching, office “security professionals,” expertise and tools.

However, some advocacy teams, together with a number of the organizations that signed Thursday’s letter, have accused Amazon of failing to inform the entire story in its security studies. On high of that, the teams say, Amazon nonetheless has an extremely excessive harm price at its warehouses.

Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel stated the corporate has cooperated with the investigation and can proceed to. “Our security file has continued to enhance,” she stated. “We proceed to work to be finest in school.”

Sanders, who chairs the Senate’s Well being, Schooling, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, Committee, didn’t reply to requests for remark in time for publication.

The letter comes on the similar time a bipartisan group of senators is trying into one other facet of Amazon’s workforce. A gaggle of 29 senators despatched a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in January asking for extra details about working circumstances for Amazon’s community of impartial supply drivers.

A few of the firm’s Supply Service Companions, impartial companies that assist make deliveries for Amazon, have accused the corporate of setting an unsafe tempo of labor and making a hazardous work setting for drivers, together with skipping breaks and making deliveries in excessive climate circumstances with out correct tools.

These allegations have led drivers to picket 25 Amazon warehouses in 9 states, in keeping with the congressional letter.

“Over the previous few years, studies of unsafe and unfair working circumstances have demonstrated that widespread security and labor violations seem like a function, not a bug, of the DSP program,” lawmakers wrote within the letter. “Clearly, additional Senate oversight of Amazon’s DSP program is overdue.”

Amazon disputed the allegations within the letter.

“DSPs are small enterprise homeowners and entrepreneurs who’re creating good jobs, with nice pay and advantages, for greater than 275,000 drivers world wide,” Lynch Vogel stated. “We strongly dispute the claims within the letter and sit up for sharing the info.”

Ryan Gerety, govt director of the Athena Coalition, one of many advocacy teams that signed Thursday’s letter, stated the teams sit up for seeing the outcomes of each inquiries however are significantly involved concerning the standing of the investigation into warehouse working circumstances as a result of it has been a 12 months because it started.

“In response to a groundswell of Amazon employees organizing for higher circumstances throughout the nation, a number of state and federal investigations are at present scrutinizing Amazon’s remedy of its employees,” Gerety stated. “Now, we’d like motion.”

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