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This holiday season, Amazon will move millions of packages at dizzying speed. Internal injury reports suggest all that convenience is coming at the expense of worker safety.
"Too often, when workers raise concerns about health and safety hazards on the job, employers retaliate with reduced hours or dismissal, even though doing so is clearly illegal," says Katie Weatherford, regulatory policy analyst at the Center for Effective Government.
In cities all across the country, workers stand on street corners, line up in alleys or wait in a neon-lit beauty salon for rickety vans to whisk them off to warehouses miles away. Some vans are so packed that to get to work, people must squat on milk crates, sit on the laps of passengers they do not know or sometimes lie on the floor, the other workers’ feet on top of them.
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