Amazon Warehouses: Unsafe for Workers and Communities
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- Published on Wednesday, 24 July 2019 01:36
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1864 ... July 24, 2019
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Amazon Warehouses: Unsafe for Workers and Communities
Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) led a group of 13 members of Congress urging the US Department of Labor to immediately investigate chronic violations of workplace safety at all Amazon warehouses, "owing to the breadth and severity of past violations as well as mounting public revelations of brutal and hazardous working conditions."
Their letter to the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) comes in the wake of a Monday work stoppage by Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota to protest unfair and unsafe conditions in the midst of Prime Day, Amazon’s biggest sales event of the year.
Dear Deputy Assistant Secretary Loren Sweatt:
We are writing to request that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) launch a comprehensive investigation into the workplace conditions at the warehouses from which Amazon.com, Inc. and its subsidiaries and contractors operate.
In the year 2019, working conditions in the United States of America should be the best and the... safest in the world. Unfortunately, according to numerous media reports, and reflected in previous fines levied by your agency, that is not the case at Amazon. In fact, the working conditions at this highly profitable company have been described as "unsafe," "bruising," "grueling," "a recipe for disaster," putting "workers and communities at risk," and "intrusive."
