Recently it was Amazon Prime day. It’s the big Amazon day for specials, sales and membership drives. It’s a huge money maker for them. And it’s also a really dangerous time for Amazon warehouse workers in Illinois.
These great employees work in a fast paced, intense environment year round. It only gets worse around Prime day. What do you expect from a company that is known to deny bathroom breaks to their workers?
We get a call from an injured Amazon employee at least once a week. So I’m never surprised to learn that they have a high rate of injury, but it wasn’t until Prime Day when AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler tweeted about it that I learned a stunning fact: Amazon warehouse workers are injured at approximately twice the rate of rival companies. That includes terrible employers like Walmart.
You’d think that a company that made over $34 billion would spend a bit more on employee safety. It’s kind of nuts to me that it’s not a focus for them as doing so would make their company more efficient and save them money in the long run. They certainly didn’t have a problem spending millions on anti-union efforts. Fortunately, that was money not well spent as the first Amazon unions are popping up and more are sure to come.
And it will take unions to get actual safety measures in place, at least ones that work. It’s how unions started in this country and sadly they are needed now more than ever. When a big corporation won’t act responsibly, there is no other choice. You’d think the terrible injury rates would cause some higher ups to lose their jobs and/or come up with a good plan.
I’ve read stories of Amazon workers in other states struggling to get pay and care after being hurt on the job. Fortunately that’s not usually the case in Illinois. We have probably the strongest work comp laws for workers in the country. And these laws are also sensible and fair to employers.
The end result, for now, is that Amazon workers hurt their backs, legs, arms, etc. in record numbers. They are on-boarding so many people to work who don’t seem to be properly trained. That leads to a lot of careless, reckless and naive accidents and many serious injuries.
We love helping people get an attorney for cases against Amazon and have had a lot of success in the cases we’ve been involved against them. It just feels a little bit better to win against a company that in my opinion treats their workers like garbage. If you’d like to speak with an attorney for free to see if we can help you with your case, please call us any time at 312-346-5578. We help all over Illinois.
