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Warehouse work is the fastest growing blue-collar sector

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It is twice as dangerous as other jobs

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Regulators blame productivity quotas for injuries

By Avi Asher -Schapiro and David Sherfinski

LOS ANGELES, July 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - After

a particularly gruelling shift lifting heavy boxes in an Amazon ( AMZN )

warehouse in New York State, Keith Williams' hands and wrist

stopped working - when he woke up the next day, he could barely

grasp a milk jug.

Williams blames the injury in February last year on the

breakneck pace of work at the Amazon ( AMZN ) facility, which he said the

company enforced by precisely measuring his productivity and

pushing him to work faster.

"If you don't scan a box fast enough, you end up on a list,"

said William, who is working to unionise his warehouse with the

Teamsters. "It was just too much for my body to endure."

Such injuries motivated lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to

introduce the Warehouse Worker Protection Act (WWPA), a sweeping

federal bill that would, among other things, closely regulate

productivity targets in the warehousing industry.

The sector is one of the fastest growing in the country,

employing nearly 2 million Americans.

But companies are "treating workers like they are

disposable," Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, the bill's

sponsor, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"Workers deserve consistent, reliable standards that ensure

basic safety, dignity and respect in the workplace," he said.

Markey's bill, which mirrors more than a dozen similar

proposals in U.S. states, requires companies to tell employees

what their quota or productivity targets are, as without knowing

what is expected of them, workers can feel pressured into

working harder and faster.

The bill also bars employers from holding workers to

standards that regulators determine put their safety at risk.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce business association opposes

the bill, which it says places too onerous a burden on the

warehousing sector.

"This is intrusive micromanagement from the federal

government," Marc Freedman, vice president of workplace policy

at the chamber, said in an interview.

He said warehouses already aimed to keep their workers safe,

and that it was improper for regulators to tell companies how

they should monitor and enforce productivity.

In June, California levied the largest ever penalty under

its version of the law - a nearly $6 million fine against

e-commerce giant Amazon ( AMZN ) - citing the company for failing to

disclose productivity targets as required by the law.

Similar fines have been levelled against discount retailer

Dollar General ( DG ), and food distributor Sysco ( SYY ).

Amazon ( AMZN ), which is appealing the fine, disputes the notion

that it has quotas in its warehouses.

"Nothing is more important than our employees' health and

safety," spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel said in a statement.

Amazon ( AMZN ) said only a very small number of workers were let go

because of performance issues, and that workers were free to

discuss expectations with their managers.

WAREHOUSE BOOM

Fuelled by an explosion of e-commerce and delivery, the

number of jobs in the warehousing sector has nearly tripled over

the last decade to nearly 2 million, according to data published

by the Federal Reserve.

But it is dangerous work, with an injury rate more than

double that of an average workplace.

Advances in monitoring technology and analytics give

companies more tools to push workers to the brink of what is

safe, said Jordan Barab, a former senior official with the

federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

"With productivity algorithms you find out all sorts of

sophisticated ways to make workers work faster, even if it's

less safe," he said.

Introduced in 2021, California's warehouse law, known as AB

701, was designed to take on these developments, requiring

warehouses to disclose performance targets to workers directly

and empowering regulators to intervene if they are unsafe.

"There's no pause button. There's no stopping. You have to

keep making the rate," said Nanette Plascencia, a worker and

labour organiser at the ONT8 warehouse in Moreno Valley, one of

the facilities cited by California regulators.

"And if you slow down because you're hurting badly, it's

still ultimately going to be your fault."

Amazon ( AMZN ) said it had made progress in bringing down its injury

rates and that workers could check their performance at kiosks

in their facilities.

It said the nature of work in its warehouses was being

mischaracterised.

"This isn't how performance expectations work at Amazon ( AMZN ).

Our approach ensures everyone is on equal footing and their

performance evaluation is insulated from things outside of

employees' control - like changes in the business, inventory,

freight mix, or seasonal impacts," Lynch Vogel said.

With strong backing from union groups, which are trying to

unionise Amazon ( AMZN ) warehouses across the country, variations of AB

701 have been taken up by other states, with similar laws passed

in New York, Washington State, Oregon and Minnesota.

Representative Emma Greenman, who helped spearhead the law

in Minnesota, said the quota regulations were necessary for

workers' safety.

"One of the things that was getting people hurt was not

knowing and speeding up to this opaque - felt pretty Orwellian -

idea that, I don't know if I'm going to be punished because I

don't really know what standard I'm being held to until I've not

done it and I will be disciplined or fired," she said.

In June, Minnesota's Department of Labor and Industry fined

Amazon ( AMZN ) over citations for not providing a written copy of a

quota to workers in the state and for not protecting them from

ergonomics hazards. Amazon ( AMZN ) has contested the citations.

"We follow all state and federal laws and do not have fixed

quotas," Lynch Vogel, the Amazon ( AMZN ) spokesperson said.

"Despite sharing this information and more with Minnesota

OSHA during their investigation, they've chosen to issue a

citation which reflects a lack of understanding of how we

measure performance," she said.

SPOTLIGHT ON AMAZON

Labour groups and workplace safety advocates have zeroed in

on Amazon ( AMZN ), which operates most of the country's biggest

facilities and is by far the largest player in the industry.

The California Labor Commissioner's office said it had

created a list of warehouses that had more than 1.5 times the

average injury rate for the sector, and conducted nearly 100

site visits.

"Amazon ( AMZN ) has been exploiting new tech and pioneering new

management tactics," said Irene Tung, a researcher at the

non-profit National Employment Law Project (NELP).

Tung co-authored a report released in May that said Amazon ( AMZN )

accounted for 79% of employment in U.S. large warehouses

employing more than 1,000 workers, but 86% of all injuries in

those workplaces.

Amazon ( AMZN ) said in a statement that NELP was "misconstruing

data, or intentionally leaving out important context in order to

fit a false narrative".

Last year, OSHA levied $150,0000 in fines for safety

violations at a number of Amazon ( AMZN ) warehouses across the country -

Amazon ( AMZN ) has disputed these citations.

Amazon ( AMZN ) also appealed a decision by the French regulator CNIL

this year to fine the company 32 million euros ($35 million) for

setting up a system to monitor employee activity and

performance. CNIL said the system was "excessively intrusive".

The company has released its own data that it says shows

steady improvements in injury rates year-on-year.

And Amazon ( AMZN ) pointed towards a company blog post that lists a

number of ways it has deployed technology - from ergonomically

designed workstations, to robotic assistance - that it says

eases the load on workers.

The company did not directly respond to questions about its

position on the WWPA, which would create a national "Quota Task

Force" to help with enforcement and training.

Freedman, of the Chamber of Commerce, argued such laws would

end up making warehousing more expensive for consumers. "It

would create new costs, and those costs could be passed down to

everybody," he said.

(Reporting by Avi Asher-Schapiro and David Sherfinski; Editing

by Jon Hemming. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable

arm of Thomson Reuters. Visit https://context.news/)