Amazon workers who are unable to work due to on-the-job injuries are turning to online fundraising campaigns to pay bills while they fight for compensation and disability benefits.
Three current employees who were injured while working at one of the tech giant’s warehouses said they experienced “horrible bureaucratic red tape” while seeking financial assistance, including one who lost his home.
In an interview with The Guardian, They alleged that the company ignored workers’ concerns about the strain of warehouse work, denied their requests for compensation and benefits after injuries, and prioritized productivity above all else..
In response, Amazon acknowledged that it had found “several” issues, but claimed employees had provided “a number of inaccurate pieces of information.” The company did not disclose which pieces were deemed inaccurate.
Amazon is one of the world’s largest employers, with 1.5 million workers worldwide, but has long faced criticism over working and safety conditions in its warehouses. The company has repeatedly defended itself, insisting it is “committed to the highest standards” in safety as part of its pledge to create the “safest workplace on earth.”
But over the years, many workers have come forward with troubling stories of being injured on the job, being sent back to work by Amazon’s on-site medical unit, AmCare, and then facing lengthy battles and delays in trying to obtain workers’ compensation, medical care, accommodations and disability benefits for months or even years.
“This is why we became homeless.”
In August 2023, Keith Williams was alone loading containers from a trailer at the shipping dock of Amazon’s SWF1 warehouse in Rock Tavern, New York, when a computer desk fell on him, striking him in the back of his head.
After the punch, Williams said she felt nauseous and dizzy and went to Amcare, where she was given aspirin and ice. Amcare didn’t know what to do, so she went to the emergency room.
When he returned to work the next day, he was assigned to lighter duties, but he said his manager continued to ask him what he was doing, despite the accommodations made due to his injury. “I was just made to sit in an uncomfortable position, in the middle of the warehouse, like a human zoo,” he recalled.
“All they care about is how much money you make, how much they can squeeze out of you, how much they can’t give you, and how much they can get out of you.”
Just five months later, in February, Williams was injured again at work when, instead of being transferred to a less demanding position, she was tasked with repeatedly lifting heavy objects. When she tried to lift an object, she suddenly felt severe pain in her wrist and elbow, and was unable to lift it.
He went to AmCare, waited there for an hour, then went to the emergency room on his own accord.
After losing his job and being injured, Williams still hasn’t received his disability benefits. “I’m fighting with the workers’ compensation insurance company. They’re passing me around,” he said. “I didn’t get my full benefits because I hadn’t worked a year when I was injured in February. So we’re homeless. We can’t afford housing.”
In April, Williams and his family were evicted from their home after a dispute with their landlord and were forced to move into a motel after being unable to raise financing for a new rental property.
As Williams recovers from a repetitive strain injury, GoFundMe campaign This initiative was started for families while they were suffering the financial impact of workplace injuries.
“I have no grip strength,” he said. “I can’t carry anything for long periods of time. Even carrying a gallon of milk makes me tired. My daily life has taken a big hit and now everything is much more difficult.”
“We always say something about it, but we never think about or care about the toll it takes on the body.”
“I maxed out my savings, my 401k and my credit cards.”
Two years after Christine Mano began her picking and loading job at Amazon’s STL8 warehouse outside St. Louis, Missouri, in August 2021, she began experiencing severe symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome due to the repetitive motions inherent in the job. She underwent two surgeries in October and December of the following year, returning to her regular duties a few days after the second surgery.
“Out of a 12-hour shift, I would work three 12-hour shifts,” Manno said, “and even though I was able to lift thousands of pounds during my shifts, my hands were still visibly swollen, and the condition of my hands began to worsen.”
In May 2022, while reaching for a tall box, I felt pain in my back, arms, and legs.
After her initial claim for disability benefits was met with opposition, Manno hired an attorney. Her claim was eventually granted.
In January 2023, eight months after her injuries, she saw a spine surgeon. “He agreed that these injuries occurred while I was working,” Manno said. “Up until that point, I hadn’t received any treatment. They wouldn’t authorize anything.”
Manno continued to work despite his injury, with restrictions, and began physical therapy, but said it did not ease the pain.
During that time, Manno was driving a turret truck at an Amazon warehouse when he felt dizzy and unsteady, which did not require lifting, so he stopped and told his supervisor, who told him to sit down, but told him to get back in the truck 20 minutes later and finish the job.
Despite her doctor’s recommendation that the restrictions be permanent, Manno said Amazon notified her in July 2023 that it would no longer honor her restrictions. Her doctor asked for a referral to a pain-management specialist, but Amazon denied that as well.
With her short-term disability benefits exhausted, she has recently been struggling to convince her company to grant her long-term benefits.
Health problems and being unable to work left her in financial difficulty. GoFundMe While waiting for a decision on benefits.
“I keep getting told I need more paperwork, but workers’ compensation won’t let me go to the doctor to get the paperwork, but once they know it’s a work-related injury, they won’t accept it under health insurance, so I can’t get treatment,” Manno said. “I’ve used up my savings, my 401k, my credit cards.
“Bill collectors are calling me 20 to 30 times a day – it’s hellish. The stress has directly impacted my neck injuries, I have terrible sciatica, I have limited movement in my hands, I lose feeling in them, I drop things. My hands don’t work the way they should.”
“Safety is an afterthought”
Rock Tavern SWF1 owner Nick Moran broke his finger last August and drove himself to the emergency room to get stitches.
“I went right back to work,” he said, because Amazon’s workers’ compensation department “won’t pay me for the first week.” “It’s just bureaucratic and a terrible process.”
Soon after his injury, he hired a workers’ compensation lawyer because he knew of the problems his coworkers had experienced filing medical and compensation claims for work-related injuries and because he was aware that Amazon was disputing its coverage for the medical costs of his injury.
“Amazon talks big about safety, but their main priority is productivity,” Moran argued. “Safety is an afterthought.”
When asked by the Guardian about the testimony of the three employees, Amazon spokeswoman Maureen Lynch Vogel said: “The safety and health of our employees is our number one priority. We typically do not comment on individual employee situations, but unfortunately, these individuals have chosen to share a number of inaccurate information.
“Each of these allegations has been thoroughly investigated, and in the few cases where issues have been found, our teams have worked to address concerns and address needs where necessary.”
Amazon did not respond to requests for clarification about what information it determined to be inaccurate or what issues it found and resolved.
“The safest workplace on earth”
Amazon is Pledged The company set a goal three years ago to become “the safest workplace on earth,” and also announced it was taking steps to halve its workplace injury rates by 2025. But labor advocates and worker safety groups say injury rates remain dangerously high.
The Center for Strategic Organizing, a labor coalition, has released a report every year on injury rates at Amazon for the past four years. In its most recent report, it found: report The study found that Amazon’s injury rate in 2023 was 6.5 per 100 workers. In 2020, the year before the company first announced a plan to cut its injury rate in half, the injury rate was 6.6 per 100 workers, SOC said.
Amazon’s injury rates remain “extremely high,” argues David Rosenblatt, deputy director of strategic research and campaigns at the Strategic Organizing Center, “and are down only a few percentage points from last year.”
In a separate report released last month, the National Employment Law Project argued that injury rates in Amazon’s warehouse facilities are “more than 1.5 times higher” than TJX Companies, which owns TJ Maxx and TK Maxx, and nearly three times higher than Walmart.
Amazon denied the reports’ allegations. “These documents are full of misleading and false information and were prepared by parties that refuse to acknowledge that we’ve made real progress because doing so would undermine their plans,” spokesman Vogel said, asserting that the company’s overall injury rate in the U.S. has fallen by 28 percent.
Williams, the SWF1 employee in New York, recently received some good news: After raising thousands of dollars through his online campaign, his family’s rental application was approved. They hope to move into their new apartment next month.
“There were a lot of tears shed,” he told The Guardian. “It felt like a bit of light in a dark time.”
He is still fighting for disability benefits from Amazon. “The gap between what this company makes and what it gives its employees is just too large,” Williams said.
