Who watches out for workers if a former Amazon executive is in charge of OSHA, the federal agency with the mission to protect workers?
As in other parts of government, President Trump is placing a fox in charge of the henhouse at OSHA. The Senate will take up logistics industry hack David Keeling’s nomination June 5. The administration’s goals seem to be to apply the practices of the warehouse sector, famous for being dangerous and unhealthy, to our entire economy.
While Keeling was a key workplace safety executive at Amazon, we saw that Amazon’s push for speed came at the expense of worker safety and health. Injuries are disturbingly common in Amazon warehouses and Amazon has frequently contested even the smallest citation. Keeling also worked at UPS as a top safety executive at a time when drivers documented heat illness and other hazards at work. In fact, OSHA cited Amazon and UPS for over 300 safety violations combined during Keeling’s respective tenures at each company.
For five years, the Strategic Organizing Center has been tracking the injury rate at Amazon warehouses – using publicly-available OSHA data. The SOC’s annual report is incredibly valuable because Amazon employs nearly 1 million people in its warehouses and this evidence is important to workers, the US Senate and to local officials with Amazon warehouses in their cities in the fight to hold the company accountable.
Four years ago, Amazon made a bold and completely hollow declaration that it would become the safest place to work in the world. But every year since it has a much higher injury rate than other warehouse operators. This culminated with the Senate HELP Committee’s report in December 2024 on the documents the committee subpoenaed from Amazon.
Keeling’s nomination comes at a critical time when federal enforcement capacity is being slashed and OSHA is working on long-overdue rulemaking to establish national standards to protect workers from heat illness. OSHA’s mission is to ensure that American workers are safe at work. Keeling’s record with companies that have repeatedly undermined that mission for their workers should be disqualifying.
-Sheheryar Kaoosji
