Amazon agrees to worker safety measures to settle US probe

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) -Amazon.com will implement safety measures at all of its U.S. facilities to settle a federal agency’s claims that it failed to prevent workers from developing back problems and other ergonomic injuries, the agency said on Thursday.

Amazon settled a series of complaints by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration involving 10 facilities across the country, which were set to go to trial before administrative judges next year, OSHA said in a release.

The company will adopt measures such as adjustable height workstations, ergonomic mats, harnesses and job rotations at all of its fulfillment, sorting and delivery centers and establish a process to review and correct hazards identified by workers, OSHA said. Certain policies are already in place at some facilities, according to the agency.

Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel in a statement said that OSHA had withdrawn nine of the 10 complaints it issued. The remaining case, involving an Illinois warehouse, focused on a specific claim about workers handling televisions and other bulky items, she said.

Vogel said Amazon in the settlement agreed to “continue leveraging our corporate team of certified ergonomists to ensure compliance across all sites in the network,” but that the agreement did not require the company to implement any new measures.

OSHA director Douglas Parker in a statement said the settlement would impact hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers.

“The ball is in the company’s court. OSHA stands ready to work with their ergonomics team to evaluate their progress and verify the commitments they made to OSHA,” Parker said.

Amazon will also pay $145,000 in penalties, about 90% of what the agency had sought in the underlying cases.

The announcement came on the same day that workers at seven of Amazon’s U.S. facilities walked off the job to protest what they say is the retail giant’s unfair treatment of its employees.

Safety issues have been central to a nationwide campaign to unionize workers at Amazon facilities, many of whom are employed by third-party contractors. Unions, worker advocates and many Democratic officials have criticized Amazon for allegedly imposing production quotas on workers that force them to work at a dangerous pace and develop injuries.

Amazon has said that it does not impose quotas and has invested more than $1 billion in worker safety.

OSHA said the settlement does not affect a separate investigation by federal prosecutors in New York into whether Amazon fraudulently concealed injury rates and worker safety hazards at U.S. warehouses.

(Reporting By Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Aurora Ellis)