UK

Amazon executives squirm over questions about worker injuries at select committee

Olivia Barber 

Today

Left Foot Forward

‘Most employers don’t have to call ambulance 1,400 times in five years’

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Amazon executives tried to dodge questions as MPs grilled them over worker safety issues at the multinational and the lack of up-to-date data on injuries.

“Most employers don’t have to call ambulances 1,400 times in five years,” said Liam Byrne MP, chair of the business and trade select committee.

Byrne also cited a recent report from the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which, in the words of Senator Bernie Sanders, found that “Amazon accepts injuries to its workers as a cost of doing business”.

In the evidence session examining the government’s new Employment Rights Bill on Tuesday, the select committee questioned HR directors at Amazon, Jennifer Kearney and Stuart Morgan.

Responding to Byrne’s comments, Kearney said: “I want to point out that we employ 75,000 employees over 100 locations across the entirety of the UK.”

Byrne quashed her argument, stating: “There are 50,000 people who work in the Palace of Westminster each day. We don’t call ambulances 1,400 times over the course of five years.”

Morgan said he hadn’t yet had chance to read the senate report. “At this point in time I’ve not had the opportunity to go through the details of that,” he stated.

However, he went on to say: “For Amazon, safety is our number one priority. It always has been and always will be.”

He also claimed that “Amazon is 50% safer than other businesses in the sector”.

Byrne pointed to 2022 data showing 531 injuries per 100,000 people, emphasising that these are the most recent figures available and have not been updated since.

The select committee chair asked Morgan when up-to-date figures will be made available, to which the Amazon executive said the data “is in the process of being updated”.

He also defended the 2022 data, explaining that 77 million hours were worked that year, and added that up-to-date figures, which are being processed, show “that’s actually one incident every 132 years”.

Kearney said Amazon is “a great place to work”, based on a survey of workers at the BHX4 Coventry warehouse.

In response, Lib Dem MP, Joshua Reynolds, questioned: If Amazon is such a great place to work—as you have said, that is what you hear time and again from your team—why have your team in Coventry gone on strike so much?”.

He repeated his question a further three times, stating that Kearney had not properly answered it.

Labour MP Antonia Bance highlighted that workers at BHX4 have staged 37 days of industrial action so far.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward