A Reckoning at Amazon
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2022
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The past few years have brought profits and growth to Amazon, but it’s come at a cost to many workers. Amazon warehouse employees are injured on the job at a higher rate than at other companies, even as the company has claimed to prioritize safety.
Host Al Letson speaks with Reveal’s Will Evans, who’s been reporting on injuries at Amazon for years. By gathering injury data and speaking with workers and whistleblowers, he has focused national attention on the company’s safety record, prompting regulators, lawmakers and the company itself to address the issue more closely.
Then, we bring back a story by Reveal’s Jennifer Gollan that looks at the most common type of injury at Amazon and other workplaces and why the government chose not to try to prevent it.
We end with a reprise of a story from reporter Laura Sydell about online reviews of products and businesses and how many of them are not what they seem.
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| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:07.8 | I'm Al Lettsin. |
| 0:09.4 | Back in spring 2020, it was early in the pandemic, but COVID-19 was already infiltrating Amazon's warehouses. |
| 0:17.0 | And his business boomed. |
| 0:21.6 | Many workers felt the company wasn't protecting them. |
| 0:24.6 | At another warehouse in New York, some workers walked out and protested the company's response to the pandemic. |
| 0:31.6 | Chris Smalls sent out a text announcing the protest will take place at Amazon Staten Island facility. |
| 0:36.6 | Smalls has called for the |
| 0:38.4 | company to halt operations because of the pandemic. The organizer of that walkout, Chris Smalls, |
| 0:44.5 | was fired, and Amazon didn't halt operations. It went on to make record profits during the pandemic |
| 0:50.3 | as so many Americans stayed home and ordered things online. |
| 1:00.2 | The unstoppable Amazon hitting fresh records on Thursday, adding to its 57% gain for the year. |
| 1:07.2 | But Chris Smalls, he didn't give up. He kept organizing and started a scrappy independent union drive. |
| 1:13.6 | They saw us right there at that bus stop, having a bonfire, lighten up s'mores. Whatever it took, we were right there for them every day, and I think that resonated with the workers. |
| 1:17.6 | And last month, against long odds and heavy pushback from the company, he helped achieve |
| 1:23.6 | what no one else has been able to in the U.S. An Amazon warehouse voting to unionize. |
| 1:29.7 | Let's go! |
| 1:31.5 | That's the sound of Smalls and other workers celebrating their victory with champagne. |
| 1:40.1 | Amazon is trying to overturn the results, but that union vote is a big deal beyond Amazon |
| 1:46.2 | for the fight over the future of work. |
| 1:48.9 | This is going to be the catalyst for the revolution. |
| 1:52.1 | That's exactly what this is. |
... |
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