Work Until You Bleed: Amazon’s Workplace Safety Problem | The Class Room

00:00 Leonard Johnson’s story
1:25 The rise in accidental deaths
2:37 The history of worker safety
5:08 Amazon's accidents problem
6:08 What can we do about it?

Accidental deaths are currently higher in America than at any time since we’ve been keeping record. In 2020, more than 200,000 people died by accident. In car crashes [42,051], house fires [3,500], drug overdoses [93,331], and falls on the job [805].

But it isn’t always random, and we really shouldn’t be saying “accident.” Author Jessie Singer says unintentional deaths are on the rise because, since the 1990s, we’ve deregulated most of our economy to benefit corporations.

And today, companies like Amazon push workers to the limit to reach impossible quotas. The end result? Amazon warehouses had a higher rate of injuries than any other employer in the warehouse industry and over twice the rate of its main competitor, Wal-Mart.

We talked to Leonard Johnson, one of 1,000s of Amazon workers that is injured each year, often severely. Leonard split his head open when he tripped on a ladder and had to take three days off to recover. But when he came back, Amazon’s automated system wouldn’t let him clock back in. He’s still an employee there but hasn’t worked a day since and hasn’t been paid. was injured while loading boxes onto the conveyor belt when he tripped on a ladder and hit his head. He took three days off to recover, but when he got back, he found they wouldn’t cover his days off and they wouldn’t let him clock in. Leonard hasn’t worked a shift since then.

In this episode, we’ll investigate the conditions that caused Leonard’s accident, the history of workplace safety, how Amazon exploits the environment created by deregulation and what we can do to force them to change.
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