House bill targets high injury rates in Amazon’s MN warehouses

February 18, 2022 by

Tyler Anderson, who works in Amazon’s Shakopee warehouse, told lawmakers the company’s relentless productivity rates create a dangerous culture of “fear and paranoia” among workers.

Responding to disproportionately high rates of injury at Amazon warehouses here, Minnesota lawmakers last week introduced legislation that would put the facilities under new scrutiny when it comes to ensuring workers have access to break time and advance notice of performance quotas that could result in discipline. 

“It’s our job as legislators to ensure all Minnesota workers return safely to their families,” said Rep. Rob Ecklund (D-International Falls), chair of the House Labor, Industry, Veterans and Military Affairs Finance and Policy Committee. “This bill will help ensure accountability is in place so employees have the information they need to be safe on the job.” 

Ecklund, Rep. Emma Greenman (D-Minneapolis) and other DFL lawmakers co-authored the measure, House File 2774, after a report issued in December by the National Employment Law Project backed up the accounts of local Amazon workers who, at protests and other actions in recent years, have described an unrelenting pace, frequent injuries and generally poor working conditions.  

The NELP report cited Amazon’s own data showing 11.1 injuries annually per 100 full-time-equivalent warehouse workers between 2018 and 2020. That’s more than twice the rate of injuries at non-Amazon warehouses, which averaged 5.2 per 100 full-time workers during the same time frame.  

Amazon’s Shakopee facility is particularly dangerous, researchers noted, with an injury rate in 2020 that was higher than any industry in Minnesota. 

Irene Tung, a senior researcher at NELP, said most injuries reported in Amazon warehouses were severe muscle strains, which can have lifelong effects. The injuries are also “completely preventable,” Tung said, if workers are allowed enough time to recover between repetitive tasks. 

But local warehouse workers, some of whom testified at the bill’s first committee hearing Feb. 10, said rest and recovery too often fall victim to Amazon’s “rate” – company-speak for the productivity quotas warehouse workers must meet. 

Tyler Hamilton, who has worked at the Shakopee facility for over four years, compared Amazon’s rate to a computer algorithm, but with human inputs. The result is a culture of “fear and paranoia” among workers, he told lawmakers. 

“You’ll overreach, you’ll cut corners, you’ll do things to improve your rate,” Hamilton said. “When you’re rushed, when you under stress, that weighs on people.” 

Mohamed Mire, a warehouse worker since 2017, said the struggle to meet Amazon’s rate feels like “we are fighting against a machine, but we cannot win because we are human.” 

The proposed legislation would require Amazon and other warehouse employers to spell out for their workers what their productivity quotas are and what the consequences will be if they fail to meet them. The measure would also require at least two days’ advance notice of changes to the quota and give workers the right to request information gathered by the employer to track their performance.  

The bill would prohibit warehouses from disciplining workers for failing to meet a quota that does not account for legally allowed breaks. And it would require the Department of Labor and Industry to open an investigation if a warehouse’s injury rate exceeds the industry average by more than 30%. 

Greenman called the measure appropriate, given Amazon’s growing footprint in the state. It’s only fair, she said, to expect the company live up to the standards other warehouse employers in Minnesota are already meeting.   

“When we as lawmakers hear from workers and read reports like this – about injury rates at a single company that are double the rate of others in the industry in Minnesota – we should take notice, we should ask questions and we should listen to what those workers are telling us,” Greenman said. 

The measure cleared its first hurdle in the House, advancing out of Ecklund’s Labor Committee. 

Amazon workers are organizing locally with the Awood Center, a worker center in the Twin Cities’ East African community. 

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Report exposes human cost of Amazon’s business model in Minnesota

December 15, 2021 by

Workers protested outside Amazon’s MSP1 warehouse in Shakopee in December 2018. (UA file photo)

Amazon workers this week echoed the findings of a new report that paints a troubling picture of labor conditions and inequities at the retailer’s Minnesota warehouses, prompting one state lawmaker to pledge action in the coming legislative session.

In analyzing data from six Amazon facilities, researchers from the National Employment Law Project found injury and turnover rates well above the industry average, disparities between the earnings of Black and white workers at some warehouses and work arrangements designed to thwart union organizing.

But Tyler Hamilton, who has worked at the MSP1 facility in Shakopee for four years, said the data “doesn’t surprise those of us who have worked inside those warehouses. We see it every day.”

Hamilton and others active in the Awood Center, a worker-led organization that focuses on issues affecting members of Minnesota’s East African communities, held a virtual press conference Monday to share their reactions to the report, released Dec. 8.

Rep. Emma Greenman, a DFLer from Minneapolis, pledged to hold hearings on Amazon’s labor practices after the Legislature reconvenes in January. She said she is authoring legislation to ensure warehouse workers are provided adequate breaks, safety protections and a voice on the job.

“As Amazon expands here in Minnesota, the Legislature needs to take a look at the human cost,” Greenman said.

RATE DRIVES INJURIES

Workers on the press call targeted the bulk of their frustrations at Amazon’s “rate” – a benchmark for productivity each of them must meet to avoid facing discipline. Dad Ali, a four-year Amazon veteran, recalled appealing to his managers, as they pushed the rate higher and higher, with a traditional Somali saying that humans aren’t horses and shouldn’t be whipped to move faster.

“You’re expected to work like a machine,” Ali said, speaking through an interpreter.

The driving pace, workers and researchers say, is behind Amazon’s abysmal safety record in Minnesota, where Amazon employees are more than twice as likely to be injured as other warehouse workers.

Citing Amazon’s own data, the NELP report found 11.1 injuries annually per 100 full-time-equivalent warehouse workers between 2018 and 2020. At non-Amazon warehouses, that rate was 5.2. The Shakopee facility is particularly dangerous, researchers noted, with an injury rate in 2020 that was higher than any industry in Minnesota.

Irene Tung, a senior researcher at NELP, said most injuries reported in Amazon warehouses were severe muscle strains, which can have lifelong effects. The injuries are also “completely preventable,” Tung said, but that would require easing up on work rates and allowing time to recover between repetitive tasks.

That’s not the Amazon model.

“What makes working at Amazon so much more dangerous than working at other Minnesota jobs is the excessively rapid pace of work, enforced through a distinctive disciplinary system that Amazon has pioneered, which combines intensive electronic monitoring with frequent discipline and termination,” Tung said.

“When everybody’s paranoid about getting written up for not going fast enough, injuries happen,” said Emali Pettey, who worked for Amazon from 2020 to 2021. “That’s what happened with me.”

Workers at Amazon’s Shakopee facility went on strike in July 2019.

THE RUNAROUND

Suffering an injury on the Amazon warehouse floor, Minnesota workers said, is the start of a drawn-out process that too often results in greater injury, unpaid medical bills or lost wages. Speaking through an interpreter, Fardowso Yusuf said the process is known among Amazon workers like her as “the runaround.”

“When I got injured, I was sent home and my injuries were deleted out of the system,” Yusuf alleged. “I couldn’t find any record, and I didn’t receive any payment.”

Yusuf and other workers said they confronted managers with reports from their personal physicians, only to be “told they don’t accept that kind of report,” Yusuf said. Ali said he asked for a reduced workload after his doctor diagnosed him with spinal disc injuries, only to be told by a manager “to go back to work.”

“They don’t take it in a serious manner,” said Ali, who still feels the effects of his injury. “Amazon will give you the runaround until you give up, until you put your hands up and get no results. If you don’t speak [English] that makes it even harder for you.”

TROUBLING DISPARITIES

Indeed, NELP researchers raised questions about Amazon’s disproportionate employment of Black and East African workers in Minnesota. Greenman, a member of the House committee on labor, said those practices should draw greater public scrutiny in light of “Minnesota’s shameful racial inequities.”

In Scott County, where Amazon accounts for the overwhelming majority of warehouse employees, Black warehouse workers take home 37% less, on average, than white warehouse workers. Amazon doesn’t make public average pay rates by race, but Tung said the data suggests Black workers in Scott County are being segregated into lower-paying jobs.

What is clear from the report is that Amazon is not living up to its promise to create high-quality jobs for Minnesotans at its warehouses. If Amazon were, Tung said, its annual turnover rates – which reached 170% at the Shakopee facilities – would not be glaringly higher than other warehouses, which average 61% per year.

Greenman called the Amazon business model “jarring” and said it falls short of Minnesota’s standards.

“It’s a model that uses and discards workers at an alarming rate, with little regard for their health, their economic security, their well-being and the impact it has on our local communities,” she said.

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Shakopee workers demand safety, solutions from Amazon

December 14, 2018 by

Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar leads protesters in song outside the Amazon warehouse in Shakopee.

Amazon workers in Minnesota escalated their campaign for better jobs today, rallying with U.S. Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar outside the company’s Shakopee distribution center at the height of the holiday shopping season.

Omar told Amazon workers she came to Shakopee to show support for their demands and to amplify their voices.

“I am excited that you recognize your power,” she said. “Amazon doesn’t work if you don’t work… And it’s about time we make Amazon understand that.”

Workers at the facility, mostly East African immigrants, are demanding safer conditions, and they want Amazon, the world’s largest internet retailer, to devote a portion of its local profits toward efforts to reduce economic disparities and lift up communities of color in the region.

“We are human beings,” Amazon worker Khadra Qassim told over 100 people gathered outside the distribution center. “You cannot treat us as robots.”

Qassim is among a large contingent of Amazon workers in Minnesota who have joined the Awood Center, a worker center based in the Twin Cities’ East African immigrant community. Members have met twice with Amazon management this fall — a first-of-its-kind accomplishment for warehouse workers in the U.S. — but say the company has so far failed to meet their most pressing demands.

In response, workers called today’s rally, which took place during a shift change inside the facility.

The action was spirited and mostly upbeat. A crowd assembled across the parking lot from the warehouse, and it put up a cheer as workers exited the building after finishing their shifts and walked toward the protest. Many raised fists in the air or clapped their hands eagerly as they made their way, and several embraced co-workers and friends waiting for them at the rally.

But the mood shifted quickly as, one by one, workers took the bullhorn to describe the conditions they face on the Amazon warehouse floor.

Khadra Hassan was pregnant when Amazon hired her to work at the distribution center. Despite the company’s assurances it would accommodate her condition, she injured herself carrying a large package and began bleeding on the shop floor. To make matters worse, Hassan said, she was still in the probationary stage of employment, so she had no health insurance benefits.

“Thank God my daughter survived and I had a baby girl,” Hassan said. But another injury, she added, has kept her out of work since September.

The workers’ ranks swelled with supporters from labor unions, faith groups and other community organizations. The company is a “highly impactful employer” in the global economy, said Monica Bielski Boris, director of the University of Minnesota’s Labor Education Service. That means even workers who aren’t employed by the company have a stake in the employment conditions Amazon sets — or, perhaps someday, the contracts its workers negotiate.

Unionizing won’t be easy, though. Amazon makes little effort to hide its hostility toward collective bargaining. That’s what makes the Shakopee workers — who are targeting the company directly, publicly and fearlessly — so impressive, Bielski Boris added.

“It’s very inspiring,” she said. “It makes me proud to be a Minnesotan. Hopefully, it inspires other Amazon workers around the world to demand greater accountability from Amazon too.”

After the program workers walked together to the front door of the warehouse and tried to deliver their demands to Amazon, but they were blocked by police from entering. As of now there are no further negotiation meetings set between the two sides.

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Amazon workers sound alarm on conditions inside Eagan warehouse

June 4, 2018 by

Women who load packages onto delivery vans describe conditions inside Amazon’s Eagan warehouse.

EAGAN – East African women who load delivery vans for Amazon delivered a message of their own to the world’s largest internet retailer today.

Backed by community and labor allies outside Amazon’s Eagan facility, workers spoke publicly about the increasingly dangerous working conditions inside the warehouse, and of management’s refusal to accommodate workers who fast during Ramadan.

“They told us if you’re not able to do the job, then quit,” Amazon worker Nimo Hirad said.

Staffing in Hirad’s department dipped from about 50 to 20 workers a few months ago, she said, after management stopped assigning two workers to load each van. The move dramatically increased the pace of work inside the facility, which does not have air conditioning.

“We still do the same job,” Hirad said. “It’s just twice as hard as it used to be.”

Workers’ frustrations reached a tipping point as the weather grew hotter and their religious fast approached. Hirad and co-worker Deqa Mohamed said they asked managers for accommodations – like a return to two-person crews – that would allow workers who fast to do so safely on the job, but management refused.

A delegation of workers and community supporters enter the Eagan facility to deliver their list of demands.

Workers turned to the Awood Center, a Minneapolis-based worker center for East African people, for support. The worker center helped stage the public event today and reached out to prominent public officials like state Rep. Ilhan Omar, who offered her support for workers.

“We have rights to bring our concerns up, and we are not afraid,” Hirad said. “We just want someone to address our concerns.”

A manager at the Eagan facility met with demonstrators and received a list of demands – including air conditioning and two-person loading crews – signed by workers and supporters.

Amazon is one of Minnesota’s largest employers of East African workers, according to the Awood Center.

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