I can tell you one thing. At least at smaller warehouses under-reporting of injuries is common. So whatever statistics are being used I'd be careful with.<p>One trick I heard about. If you can get the employee count up, you can get your reported injury rates down.<p>Ie, two warehouses, both doing 1 injury per 10,000 packages shipped. If one has double the employee count it can make some of the reported injury rates go lower. If you ever see 5 guys watching one guy dig a hole - that employer is going to have great injury rate reporting even if the guy actually digging a hole gets injured just as often as anyone else digging a hole. Not sure if they figured out ways of mixing in management / white color jobs into the warehouse numbers.<p>But I'm surprised no one discusses underreporting at smaller warehouses.<p>And comparing to retail workers at walmart also seems a bit weird?
Looks like the report (not linked in the article) is <a href="https://thesoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/PrimedForPain.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://thesoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/PrimedForPain....</a><p>"Our findings are based on data that Amazon and other employers provided to OSHA annually from 2017 to 2020 within the General Warehouse and Storage industry (NAICS: 493110) and the last mile delivery industries (NAICS 492110 & 492210). ... All employers are legally required to submit annual injury and illness reports to OSHA for any warehouse, delivery, grocery, or wholesale trade facility with 20 or more employees annually, so these records should include every significantly-sized facility in Amazon’s US logistics network."
The study is based on self-reported data to OSHA.<p>Obviously that could make the data suspect. But more broadly I don't think we want to be punishing companies for reporting their data accurately and incentivize industry to hide injuries more.
This doesn't necessarily mean that it's really 80% higher, just that the reports show it's 80% higher. When a company has a really strong safety attitude it leads to more reporting of minor issues which can look worse, but actually tend to make the place safer.
I took a look at the study. Am I reading this right. they went to 416K FTE's from 242K FTE's and lost time cases and lost time days went down?<p>Case rate from 0.049 to 0.026?<p>Lost time days 2.6 to 1.2?<p>These are pretty striking improvements % wise for a big operation. Just interesting to see the headlines that get written! You could also write a headline, Amazon cuts lost time cases and lost time days rates in half in one year.
Anyone have a link to the study? i don't see it in the article.<p>It's a shame that what could be a long term viable job for many people has turned into temp-gig where the only path to success is being an "industrial athlete." If only Amazon actually cared about improving the down and out towns and cities it entered.
At every factory or warehouse I've worked in, the cause of almost every injury/accident was an employee not following the rules when it came to safety.