Warehouse Worker Resource Center

Improving working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California

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Report: Amazon’s California Injury Rate Jumped 30% in 2021, Despite Company’s Safety Pledge

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ONTARIO, Calif.  — A disturbing analysis of newly released Amazon injury records shows that injury rates at its facilities increased by a staggering 20 percent from 2020 to 2021.  The report finds Amazon warehouse workers were seriously injured at twice the rate of other warehouse employers at 6.8 per 100 workers, as compared to 3.3 per 100 for all other employers in the warehouse industry. 

Download the PDF report. 

A review of California-specific data shows that injury rates in California increased 30 percent, to a rate that was over 60% higher than the rate of injuries at other warehouse companies in the state.

For years, Amazon’s warehouses and related logistics operations in California have led the nation in the number of serious injuries among warehouse workers. In 2021, the injury crisis for its warehouse workers got even worse. Compared to 2020, Amazon’s California warehouse workers suffered ten injuries for every 100 full-time workers – a 30% increase from the already high rate of 7.7 per 100 full-time workers in 2020. 

“Too many people who work in Amazon facilities get injured. The data shows that this company continues to prioritize speed and profits at a terrible cost to the health and well being of its employees,” said Sheheryar Kaoosji, executive director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center. 

California is a major market for Amazon. In 2021, Amazon had a total of 123 fulfillment centers, sortation centers and delivery stations in California, with a total of 77,664 workers. 

The Injury Machine: How Amazon’s Production System Hurts Workers, published April 12 by the Strategic Organizing Center, examines Amazon’s safety and injury trends across a five-year period, focusing on the most recent employer-reported data from 2021 released earlier this month by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). According to the report, the company’s crushing work pace, punitive surveillance programs and the prevalence of robotics technology only heightens pressure on workers and fuels the nation’s second-largest private employer’s alarming injury rates, despite Amazon executives’ promises to improve safety at its warehouses.

“Amazon’s back-breaking work pace is only getting worse,” said Eric Frumin, Director of Health and Safety at the Strategic Organizing Center. “The very same year that Amazon promised to address worker safety, injury rates shot up 20 percent, facilities with robotic technology became more dangerous — and Amazon spent millions of dollars to mislead the public about the reality in their warehouses. The company’s obsession with speed is crushing tens of thousands of workers each year, and Amazon seems to have no plan to stop.”

Nationally, workers at Amazon facilities suffered nearly 40,000 injuries in 2021, according to SOC’s analysis. While Amazon employed 33% of all U.S. warehouse workers in 2021, the company was responsible for 49% of all injuries in the warehouse industry last year.

Key findings in the California data include:

  • The Redlands, Calif. fulfillment Center (known as ONT9) had the highest year-on-year increase in 2021 of any large Amazon warehouse in the state. After already being the third-worst large warehouse in the state in 2020, the overall injury rate at ONT9 jumped by another 26% in 2021 – a clear indication of the management’s failure to focus on the most urgent safety problems in the state.
  • Workers at 51 of the largest logistics centers in California suffered a total of 5,848 injuries and illnesses in 2021, of which fully 5,119, or nearly 90%, were serious enough to either force the workers to stop working entirely, or require them to switch to another job.
  • At 36 of those 51 sites, so many warehouse workers were injured that the injury rates exceeded Amazon’s already terrible 2021 national average warehouse injury of 7.9 cases/100 workers.

Among these were the massive multi-thousand-employee facilities in San Bernardino (ONT5), Moreno Valley (ONT6), Rialto, Eastvale, Bakersfield, Beaumont and Fresno, which together accounted for over 1700 injuries in 2021.

The SOC report also finds that new robotic technology in 2021 that Amazon claimed “could make work safer for employees” may not have had that impact. Serious injury rates at Amazon’s sortable facilities with robotic technology grew by 20 percent from 2020 to 2021. In 2021, these facilities had a serious injury rate of 7.3 per 100 workers — 28 percent higher than the rate at non-robotic sortable facilities (5.7 per 100). 

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The Warehouse Worker Resource Center is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) dedicated to improving working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California. We focus on education, advocacy and action to change poor working conditions in the largest hub of warehousing in the country.

What’s a quota? Everything you need to know if you’re working in a warehouse.

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Did you know that starting in January 2022 there is a new law in California that protects the health and safety of warehouse workers?

Here’s a simple quiz you can take to see if you are covered:

A) Do you work in a warehouse?

B) Are there a 100 or more employees?

C) If fewer than 100 people, does your company have 1,000 or more total warehouse employees in California?

D) Does your warehouse use work quotas, rates, or similar performance targets?

If you answered YES to these questions then you are covered. Here’s what that means:

As of Jan. 1, 2022, under California’s new law AB 701 your employer MUST:

  • Have provided existing employees a written description of every quota an employee is expected to meet 
  • Provide every newly hired employee with a written description of each quota they are expected to meet 

Your employer also CANNOT:

  • Discipline or terminate you for failing to meet a quota for which you were not provided a written description as described above.
  • Discipline or terminate you for failing to meet a quota requiring so much work or speed that it prevents you from taking meal or rest breaks, using the bathroom, or following CalOSHA safety laws. 

Do you have questions? 

If you never received a written description of your quota, contact us! Two ways:

  1. Call (951) 394-0236 (Español or English)
  2. Email: legal@warehouseworkers.org

More information:

For questions or to file a complaint for an AB 701 violation, you can also contact the California Labor Commissioner’s Office (https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/districtoffices.htm). 

 

Disclaimer: This material is for general information only and is not legal advice. The law in individual circumstances may vary and you should consult an attorney for advice on your specific situation.

Warehouse Workers Are Changing the World

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Warehouse workers in the Inland Empire stand in solidarity with the workers at JFK8 in Staten Island who just formed the first-ever union at an Amazon facility.

Workers in New York showed that by working together we can win a voice on the job, better working conditions and stand up to major international corporations like Amazon. In Southern California we know all too well about wages that don’t keep up with the cost of living, dangerous working conditions and unsafe daily quotas.

We live and work in an area dominated by warehouses and we pay the price in the quality of our air and the quality of our jobs, but we are working to create a better future and lift the voices of workers and our community.

New York Amazon workers are an inspiration and a model for what is possible.

Los Angeles Worker Center Network Announces New Director

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The Los Angeles Worker Center Network is proud to announce the hire of its first Network Director, Najeeba Syeed. For the past 5 years LAWCN has worked to, support workers by building power and organizing capacity of worker centers to ensure employers and policymakers implement and improve upon the demands of the communities we organize.

We are excited that Najeeba will be bringing her deep expertise and experience to the network. Our work empowering workers from across Los Angeles will benefit greatly from her leadership. Najeeba looks forward to meeting with partners after her start date of March 1, 2022.

Najeeba joins us after 20 decades as a non profit executive, mediator, professor and government staffer. She has led organizations that offered conflict resolution services and education in communities, courts and schools. After moving to Los Angeles in 2000 upon graduating from law school, she led the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center and then served as the executive director of the Western Justice Center. The organizations worked to resolve large scale community disputes. She developed programs that addressed workplace conditions, conflicts and employer-employee relations.

In 2010 she joined the faculty of Claremont School of Theology and was a leader in training many of Los Angeles’ progressive faith leaders in the labor and justice movements in our region. During her decade long tenure there, she was instrumental in teaching courses in social justice, faith based organizing, negotiation/mediation and the history of interfaith justice movements. In 2021 she served as a government staffer in city hall.

Najeeba has also mediated many cases involving employee demands regarding wages, working conditions and workers’ labor rights. She has worked closely with groups such as CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice on campaigns, actions and public education on labor concerns. She has received numerous prestigious awards such as the 2018 Scholar – Activist Award from Auburn Seminary in recognition of her outstanding advocacy on behalf of human rights in Los Angeles.

We are delighted to have her join us as our inaugural director for the LAWCN. “I look forward to serving this network of the leading and cutting edge workers’ rights organizations in Los Angeles. Especially as we consider the importance of workers in this time of a global pandemic, I am excited to develop collaborative programs, policies and actions that build on the incredible work of these workers centers.”

The LA Worker Center Network consists of CLEAN Carwash Campaign, Garment Worker Center (GWC), Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), Los Angeles Black Worker Center (LABWC), Pilipino Workers Center (PWC), Restaurant Opportunities Center of Los Angeles (ROC-LA), UCLA Downtown Labor Center, and Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC).

The WWRC is a proud part of the LA Worker Center Network and is excited to be the fiscal sponsor for this project as it expands and builds power among workers in Los Angeles.

 

Statement on Passage of the Warehouse Worker Protection Act

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For Immediate Release: Sept. 22, 2021

Contact: Sheheryar Kaoosji, 213-453-8454 skaoosji@warehouseworkers.org

 

Statement from Sheheryar Kaoosji, Executive Director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, on the Passage of Assembly Bill 701

 

ONTARIO, Calif. — The Warehouse Worker Resource Center is excited that the legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom made the Warehouse Worker Protection Act, Assembly Bill 701 law. This bill is a groundbreaking and meaningful step toward a warehouse sector in California that is just and equitable.

Are you a warehouse worker? Find out if you are covered. 

As goods movement and warehousing become a dominant sector of California’s economy, we have seen conditions decline rather than improve. Employers like Amazon, now California’s largest private employer, have been driving conditions down with high and burdensome quotas for workers, leading to unacceptable injury rates and employee turnover that destabilize regions with large warehouse workforces like the Inland Empire and the Central Valley.

 

AB 701 will ban work performance rates that force workers into unsafe or uncompensated work; empower workers to take concerns over work rates to state enforcement agencies; and provide workers who speak up or ask about their work rates with retaliation protections. Such sensible measures will make the warehouse sector more sustainable and protect the hundreds of thousands of Californians who work in warehouses. 

 

Thanks to the leadership of Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and our partners at Teamsters and other key unions and organizations, who stood with and will continue to fight for the rights of warehouse workers in California.

 

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About Warehouse Worker Resource Center

Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California. WWRC assists workers dealing with issues of health and safety, wage theft and workers’ compensation when injured among other things. WWRC also serves as a community center for workers, family members and supporters interested in knowing their rights, joining with other workers to share experiences and learn from each other, and building a movement for workers’ rights in the Inland Empire and throughout Southern California.

WWRC Plays a Key Role in a Nearly $1.4M Wage Fine by Labor Commissioner

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About 100 La Mina de Oro employees experienced wage justice recently as the Labor Commissioner cited the Riverside perfume and fragrance wholesale distributor close to $1.4 million for wage-related violations. The two violations, issued February 2021 and May 2021, resulted from worker complaints stemming three years ago. Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC), a nonprofit worker rights organization based in Ontario, played a pivotal role in the state’s decision to issue the citations as they helped La Mina de Oro staff understand their workplace legal rights and assisted in reporting violations.

“I am glad we have found some justice in this case,” says a former employee from La Mina del Oro, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “Unfortunately, many workers are scared to speak up or file complaints. I am happy for the lost wages we should receive, but even more so if this means that other workers don’t have to go through what we did.”

In early 2018, WWRC learned of potential wage and other violations at La Mina del Oro when several employees approached the organization for assistance with working conditions they believed were illegal. Because multiple workers at La Mina del Oro reported similar wage theft violations, an investigation by California was launched. After complaints were verified and La Mina del Oro’s operations analyzed, the Labor Commissioner issued citations totalling $1,393,907 for violations of minimum wage, overtime, meal and rest break, and itemized wage statement laws.

“We’re glad to have played a pivotal role in the Labor Commissioner’s citation and bring justice to La Mina de Oro workers,” says Sheheryar Kaoosji, Executive Director at WWRC. “Our organization’s mission is to take action against poor working conditions in warehouses and beyond. But to achieve this, employees must trust that we will advocate for them. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.”

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