\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span>mazon, one of the world\u2019s largest employers, has for years faced scrutiny over its safety record. When Billy Foister, a 48-year-old worker, died after a heart attack inside one of the tech giant\u2019s warehouses in September 2019, managers were accused of telling staff to \u201cget back to work\u201d.<\/p>\n When another worker died this month at a distribution center in Troutdale, Oregon, an Amazon spokesperson claimed they had collapsed from an \u201cexisting medical issue\u201d. They denied a report that a nearby employee was told: \u201cPlease get back to work.\u201d<\/p>\n As Donald Trump\u2019s administration continues to overhaul federal government oversight of workplace safety, workers inside Amazon and labor advocates say the company\u2019s injury rates, and how it treats injured workers, remain a problem.<\/p>\n While the company insists that \u201cnothing is more important\u201d than its employees\u2019 safety, it continues to face questions about how it handles, and reports, workplace injuries.<\/p>\n A training PowerPoint document obtained by the Guardian on \u201cbest practices\u201d inside its AmCare in-house first aid unit, included slides on how to \u201cmaximize AMCARE Utilization\u201d, which it defined as the percentage of employees who pass through without the need to see a workers\u2019 compensation doctor.<\/p>\n The presentation covers how to \u201cprevent day 1 send outs\u201d, where workers bypass the service and go to a doctor first. AmCare \u201cCAN NOT send any one home or excuse time\u201d, it said. If a worker is injured, it said, \u201cdo not recommend they take time to rest it away\u201d, adding: \u201creport to amcare and receive treatment early.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon disputed the document, dated August 2022. \u201cWe have over a million employees who sometimes create documents that are never used,\u201d Sam Stephenson, a company spokesperson, said. \u201cThis document is several years old, doesn\u2019t reflect the priorities or policies of our Global Medical Health team, and was never approved for use.\u201d<\/p>\n J<\/span>uan Loera-Gomez, 46, was working at LGB5, an Amazon sortation center in San Bernardino, California, in October 2024, when he was assigned to work alone in an area he typically did not work in, according to a lawsuit filed in March. The area normally had at least three workers, per the filing.<\/p>\n After several hours unjamming, pushing and pulling boxes that each weighed more than 50 pounds, Loera-Gomez claims that he sustained a \u201clife-altering workplace injury to his back and shoulders\u201d.<\/p>\n He reported his injury to his manager, according to the lawsuit, only to be told to keep working. In November 2024, he was seen at a medical center and given work restrictions, and Amazon placed him on light duty. Over the next six months, Loera-Gomez was diagnosed with several strains, sprains and a lumbosacral disc disease while receiving care.<\/p>\n As he recovered, Loera-Gomez participated in organizing efforts with other workers, calling on Amazon to make improvements to safety and working conditions in the warehouse and urging the company not to take alleged disciplinary action for \u201ctime off task\u201d spent using the bathroom.<\/p>\n Loera-Gomez alleges that something strange happened in May 2025. He was told by a safety manager he would need to find a new place to work, according to the lawsuit, because the company could no longer accommodate his work restrictions. He started receiving notifications that he had exceeded 180 days of working under accommodations. The following month, Loera-Gomez was told he could no longer come to work, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n Amazon placed Loera Gomez on unpaid leave. He protested, until his employment was terminated in January, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cThey accommodated my work restrictions after my injury at first, but then suddenly forced me out on unpaid leave, even though I was still able to work. I was later fired by a single email,\u201d said Loera-Gomez in a statement. \u201cWhat Amazon did was very hard on my family. We depended on my job to pay for our house, food and monthly expenses for my children.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephenson, the Amazon spokesperson, said \u201cmany of these claims appear to be false or misrepresent Amazon policies\u201d, and expressed confidence that this \u201cwill be proven through the legal process\u201d.<\/p>\n A colleague of Loera-Gomez at LGB5, who remains employed by Amazon and requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said that if workers are hurt on the job, they are sent to AmCare \u2013 which they compared to the equivalent of a school nurse.<\/p>\n \u201cThey only give you an ice pack or water,\u201d the worker said. \u201cYou can\u2019t get adequate help at AmCare. My experience at AmCare, they\u2019ll try to keep you there for the longest time because they want you to go back to work, they will do everything in their power to not let you go home.\u201d<\/p>\n AmCare won\u2019t log reports, they claimed, until it\u2019s completely apparent a worker cannot return to work. \u201cAmazon really, really likes it when their injury rate looks low, so they will do their best and not have injuries logged,\u201d the worker said.<\/p>\n Amazon denied the worker\u2019s allegations. \u201cThis is false,\u201d Stephenson said. \u201cEnsuring our employees have access to onsite first-aid and to their care of choice is incredibly important to us because the safety of our team and our partners is our top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t an isolated incident,\u201d said Lauren Teukolsky, the attorney representing Loera-Gomez. \u201cIt looks to me there\u2019s a pretty clear pattern of this occurring in Amazon warehouses.\u201d<\/p>\n The lawsuit is one of several recent cases related to Amazon\u2019s injury rates.<\/p>\n Lashone Brown, who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, filed a lawsuit in February alleging that he was fired while recuperating at home from surgery for two work-related hernias he suffered at Amazon. The firm has also disputed this lawsuit, and its allegations.<\/p>\n In California, a trial began in January 2026 over a lawsuit filed by several former Amazon workers over heat conditions across its warehouses. Amazon did not comment on the specific allegations, but Stephenson said: \u201cThe health and safety of our employees and partners is our highest priority, and our heat prevention and mitigation policies and practices exceed state and federal guidance.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, elected officials, state and federal government agencies, workers and labor groups have looked closely at Amazon\u2019s injury rates, and how injured workers are treated. The company has repeatedly denied and dismissed criticism.<\/p>\n It claimed in 2016 that improved record keeping resulted in injury rate increases. It claimed in 2018 that injury rates were high because the company was aggressive about recording injuries, and conservative in allowing injured workers to return to work.<\/p>\n In 2019, Amazon\u2019s serious injury rate reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) hit 7.7 per 100 employees, nearly double the industry average \u2013 and the company now uses that year as a benchmark to tout their safety progress, and declining rates. Amazon said in an email that it does this \u201cbecause 2019 \u2013 unlike 2020 \u2013 was a year of normal operations\u201d.<\/p>\n Amazon\u2019s injury rates declined in 2020, before increasing again in 2021, then decreasing in subsequent years. They remain above warehouse industry averages.<\/p>\n In 2021, the company\u2019s founder, Jeff Bezos, pledged in a letter to shareholders to become Earth\u2019s safest place to work. The company set a goal to cut its injury rates in half in 2025.<\/p>\n Even by Amazon\u2019s own numbers, it seems to have fallen short. In 2021, the company reported a US recordable incident rate (RIR) of 7.6 per 100 employees. In 2025, it reported a rate of 5.<\/p>\n In 2024, Amazon employed 39% of US warehouse workers but accounted for 56% of all serious injuries in the industry, according to the Strategic Organizing Center.<\/p>\n Amazon has disputed the reports by such groups, and questioned their methodology, while these reports have in turn criticized Amazon\u2019s own reports and methodology.<\/p>\n When a December 2024 Senate report found that Amazon \u201cmanipulates its workplace injury data to portray its warehouses as safer than they actually are\u201d, Amazon disputed the report and its methodology.<\/p>\n Stephenson, the Amazon spokesperson, said: \u201cThe reality is that nothing\u2019s more important than the safety of our employees, we\u2019ve invested more than $2.5bn in safety programs over the past six years, and we\u2019ve seen the results: including a 43% reduction in our global recordable incident rate since 2019, which includes any work-related injury that requires more than basic first-aid.\u201d<\/p>\n Osha, as the federal government agency on workplace safety, launched its first multisite investigation in more than a decade amid concern over the conditions inside Amazon\u2019s warehouse.<\/p>\n But in December 2024, in the final weeks of the Biden administration following Trump\u2019s election victory, Osha and Amazon reached a settlement to resolve multiple hazardous working conditions cases. It covered Amazon sites nationwide and included ongoing meetings and assessments of the company\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n Among the factors that prompted the agency to reach a settlement was Bezos\u2019s decision to block the Washington Post, his newspaper, from endorsing Kamala Harris for the presidency, a former Osha official in the Biden administration said. Times were changing. \u201cIt was a consideration,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n The settlement was announced as part of a drive \u201cto help better protect employees from hazardous working conditions leading to serious lower back and other musculoskeletal disorders\u201d. Amazon\u2019s acknowledgment of this problem had varied over time, and the company had been very sensitive to the issue, the former Osha official said. \u201cThe settlement acknowledges a much longer-term process of fixing things that is not going to happen overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Department of Labor said Osha and Amazon had held \u201cbiannual meetings\u201d to discuss the settlement \u201cand additional topics such as the status of pilot projects and controls intended to address ergonomic risks\u201d, but did not provide further information on Amazon\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n The settlement did not affect an investigation by the southern district of New York at the US Department of Justice that began under the Biden administration. The justice department did not respond to multiple requests to confirm whether the investigation continues under Trump. The recently fired US attorney general, Pam Bondi, was registered as a lobbyist for Amazon in 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n Osha conducted 20% fewer inspections from April to September 2025, compared with the same period in 2024. Workplace health and safety penalties have dropped 45% under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Amazon donated $1m to Trump\u2019s inaugural fund before Trump\u2019s return to office, compared with $58,000 it gave to Trump\u2019s inauguration in 2017, and $276,509 it gave to Biden\u2019s inaugural fund in 2021. It also faced questions over its acquisition of a documentary on Melania Trump, the first lady. \u201cWe\u2019ve been a company across five administrations and we always try to have a collaborative relationship with each administration and policymakers of all levels of government,\u201d said Stephenson, the Amazon spokesperson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amazon, one of the world\u2019s largest employers, has for years faced scrutiny over its safety record. When Billy Foister, a 48-year-old worker, died after a heart attack inside one of the tech giant\u2019s warehouses in September 2019, managers were accused of telling staff to \u201cget back to work\u201d. When another worker died this month at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[422,2395,3000,1099,253,3062,514,1296],"class_list":{"0":"post-48649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-faces","10":"tag-fresh","11":"tag-record","12":"tag-safety","13":"tag-scrutiny","14":"tag-work","15":"tag-workplace"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Fired by a single email\u2019<\/h2>\n
Earth\u2019s safest place to work?<\/h2>\n
Workplace safety under Trump<\/h2>\n