Thread by @reveal

1/ You should probably read our new investigation before doing your #CyberMonday shopping:

Amazon’s internal warehouse injury records expose the true toll of its relentless drive for speed. revealnews.org/article/behind…

2/ We amassed internal injury records from 23 of Amazon’s 110 U.S. fulfillment centers.

Taken together, the rate of serious injuries for those facilities was more than double the national average for the warehousing industry.

3/ The numbers: 9.6 serious injuries per 100 full-time workers in 2018. The industry average: 4. The rates at one warehouse in Eastvale, California were 4x the industry average. At another in Troutdale, Oregon, they were 6x.

4/ We asked @drdavidmichaels what he thought of the numbers. He’s the former head of OSHA and now a professor at @GWtweets’ public health school.

“According to Amazon’s own records, the risk of work injuries at fulfillment centers is alarmingly, unacceptably high,” he said.

5/ The root of Amazon’s success appears to be at the root of its injury problem, too: the blistering pace of delivering packages to its customers.

6/ The company uses cutting-edge technology, unrelenting surveillance and constant disciplinary write-ups to push workers like Candice Dixon to the limit.

7/ Within just two months – or nearly 100,000 items – the lifting destroyed Dixon’s back. Today, the 54-year-old can barely climb stairs. She can no longer work at Amazon. And she’s running out of her workers’ comp settlement.

8/ Many workers said they had to break the safety rules to keep up their jobs.

9/ Our reporting suggests that Amazon’s robots have led to even more injuries. Of the records we obtained, most of the warehouses with the highest rates of injury deployed robots.

10/ The reason, according to former Amazon safety managers: They were too efficient. Humans couldn’t keep up.

11/ After Amazon debuted the robots in Tracy, California, five years ago, the serious injury rate there nearly quadrupled, going from 2.9 per 100 workers in 2015 to 11.3 in 2018, records show.

12/ The company’s aggressive production demands have overwhelmed its safety teams’ efforts to protect workers.

13/ That’s what five former Amazon safety managers told us. They oversaw safety at fulfillment centers around the country and spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.

14/ The internal injury records were supposed to be public under an Obama administration proposal. But Trump reversed course. We’ve tried to sue to get them. Amazon has kept them private.

15/ Still, by law, employers must provide complete injury records to any current or former employee who requests them: osha.gov/laws-regs/regu…

16/ So we reached out to Amazon warehouse workers past and present and explained how to request records for their worksite.

We’re not done.

Here’s how Amazon workers can help us get more: revealnews.org/article/help-u…

17/ You might be curious about the injury rate at the fulfillment center than handles your packages. You can check on it here: revealnews.org/article/amazon…

18/ Read the full story. This thread only covers a slice of it: revealnews.org/article/behind…

And listen to the podcast: apple.co/reveal

19/ Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on this story and our latest investigations: revealnews.org/newsletter