In a modern economy, monitoring and supervising worker safety is a key function of government. From this perspective, it is completely appropriate for government regulators to pay special attention to Amazon’s worker safety record, given that the company has been the biggest creator of new jobs in recent years. It even makes sense that Senator Bernie Sanders should issue a report about Amazon’s worker safety record.
But speaking as an economist, the just-released Sanders report is weird and unhelpful. In particular, the report focuses on 2019, the equivalent of ancient history at this point. Not only did the pandemic dramatically transform e-commerce and fulfillment centers, but in the years since 2019, Amazon greatly improved its objectively measured safety performance. According to data officially reported to the government, Amazon reduced its U.S. “lost time incident rate” (which only includes more significant injuries that require an employee to miss at least one day of work) by 75% since 2019. Other safety indicators have improved as well.
The truth is that Amazon is a safety success story. The ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs while raising wages and improving worker safety at the same time is an example that should be emulated, not attacked.
