ST. LOUIS –– Thursday morning, workers at the Amazon STL8 facility in St. Peters, Missouri, held a virtual press briefing to announce a new complaint (attached) filed with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
The complaint exposes new details about the company’s continued failure to ensure worker safety and has prompted an investigation of the STL8 warehouse by federal regulators. Specifically, workers described grueling work rates, mistreatment by AmCare, Amazon’s in-house medical unit, and a general atmosphere of fear in the warehouse.
STL8 worker Wendy Taylor (Photo courtesy of Missouri Workers Center)
Panelists who spoke during the briefing included former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor at OSHA Jordan Barab; Dr. Peter Orris, former chief of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois Health with over four decades of practice experience in occupational and environmental medicine; Paul Irving, Jennifer Crane, and Wendy Taylor, three current Amazon workers leading the campaign for safer warehouse conditions as STL8 Organizing Committee members; and Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) shared a video statement expressing solidarity with Missouri Amazon workers.
“I am glad that the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) has launched a separate investigation into Amazon’s safety record and its treatment of injured workers. The results of this investigation, alongside OSHA’s STL8 investigation, will continue our quest to expose what workers in St. Louis and globally are experiencing as employees for the second largest company and employer in the world.” said Congresswoman Cori Bush in a written statement.
“Amazon has the legal responsibility and in-house expertise to make its operations safer — but simply fails to use that expertise to put workers’ safety first. The ergonomic hazards, the pace of work, and Amazon’s disciplinary system work together to undermine worker safety. And Amazon’s flawed medical practices ensure that injured workers receive inadequate treatment for their injuries,” said former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor at OSHA Jordan Barab.
Dr. Peter Orris said in his remarks: “AmCare facilities are typically staffed not by nurses or doctors, but by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and athletic trainers. These EMTs and athletic trainers are not equipped to handle the types of injuries that warehouse workers suffer. Nor are they given sufficient assistance: When presented with serious injuries, AmCare staff have to place calls to Amazon’s Physician Hotline for consultations with medical professionals. The result is that AmCare staff are forced to operate with little guidance.”
“My experience with AmCare taught me that Amazon doesn’t care. In fact, they repeatedly gaslit me about my injuries. I know I’m not the only worker at STL8 feeling pushed to my limits, mentally and physically,” said Wendy Taylor, who tore her meniscus in a fall while working at the STL8 warehouse and suffered from neglectful treatment by Amazon’s in-house health facility.
She continued, “That’s why we came together to file this OSHA complaint. We have no future if we don’t take matters into our own hands and take back our lives from a company that continues to dehumanize us for the sake of profits.
Everyone deserves to be compensated fairly, to feel safe on the job, and to be treated with respect for their work. We need OSHA and federal lawmakers to do everything in their power to hold Amazon accountable to making this a reality for all of its workers. I’m proud of my coworkers at STL8 for standing together, and I want to see workers from every corner of the country come together to fight until we win.”
Following visits to Washington, D.C., earlier this year by STL8 worker Jennifer Crane and other Amazon workers, the Senate HELP committee launched an investigation into Amazon’s warehouse working conditions. In a letter to the company’s Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.), in his role as the HELP Committee chair, specifically requested information regarding the conditions at the STL8 fulfillment center.
Additional context:
Workers at STL8 have been organizing since last year in light of the corporation’s worker safety crisis: While Amazon made $33 billion in 2021, injury rates at the company remain twice as high as the industry average.
When management ignored worker demands for better pay and safer conditions on the job, workers went on strike and walked off the job last Black Friday — one of the busiest seasons of the year — reiterating the need for higher pay, safer work conditions, and greater accessibility to work policies.
On May 23, 2023, workers delivered a petition with more than 400 signatures to STL8 management. Petition demands included lower work rates, additional breaks, implementation of OSHA’s safety recommendations at other warehouses, and an independent safety audit. Management has yet to respond to these demands.
Missouri Workers Center is an organization of low-wage workers, Black, white and brown, urban and rural across the state of Missouri dedicated to fighting racism and winning economic justice for all. Missouri Workers Center is part of the Athena Coalition.