Amazon’s injury rates were far worse than the national average for the warehousing industry.

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Photo by Ngozi Cole

Doctors Without Borders is a much-admired group that brings desperately needed medical care to people around the world. It’s an organization with radical roots, promising to do whatever it takes to deliver lifesaving care to people in need. And now, it’s struggling to address institutional racism.

For this week’s episode ([link removed]) , a collaboration with Insider, reporters Mara Kardas-Nelson, Ngozi Cole and Sean Campbell talked to about 100 current and former workers at Doctors Without Borders to investigate how deep these issues run. Last summer, more than 1,000 current and former staffers wrote a letter calling out institutional racism at the organization, known by its French acronym MSF. They say MSF operates a two-tiered system that favors foreign doctors over local health workers. While foreign doctors parachuting into crisis zones get most of the attention, 90% of the work is being done by local health workers. The organization has about 63,000 people working in 88 countries.

Listen to the episode: A Racial Reckoning at Doctors Without Borders ([link removed])

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** Reveal’s investigation helps prompt new law to keep Amazon workers safe
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California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (center) is the author of the bill to crack down on warehouse work quotas. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that aims to keep workers in warehouses – particularly Amazon’s – safe. The new law prohibits warehouse companies from enforcing work quotas that prevent workers from going to the bathroom or doing their jobs safely. The law also gives workers the right to sue to overturn unsafe quotas and any discipline they receive for not meeting them. And the bill says that if a worker is punished within 90 days of making a complaint about a quota, it will be considered unlawful retaliation.

A series of investigations ([link removed]) by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting showed ([link removed]) how Amazon’s injury rates were far worse than the national average for the warehousing industry. Workers, whose pace is constantly monitored down to the second, said they had to break safety rules to keep up. Some said they even developed urinary tract infections because they had to avoid going to the bathroom to hit quotas.

“Hopefully, Amazon will look at this and start to internally change things to make things safer,” said the bill’s author ([link removed]) , Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego. “But we sent a clear message – and hopefully other states will, too – that we’re watching. We’re going to protect workers.” Gonzalez said Reveal’s investigations helped prompt the law, along with speaking to warehouse workers directly. The company is already the second-biggest employer in the United States and plans to hire 125,000 more workers ([link removed]) this year.

While Amazon has claimed its injury rate was improving, internal records showed the company’s rate of serious injuries had gotten worse from 2016 to 2019. Injury rates were especially high during peak shopping times and in Amazon’s robotic warehouses, where the company’s hyper-efficient technology pushed workers even faster.

“Amazon has utilized these technologies of the future to squeeze as much as they can out of every worker – with nothing to balance it out,” Gonzalez said.

Read the story: ‘We’re Going to Protect Workers’: New California Law Takes Aim at Amazon’s Unsafe Work Quotas ([link removed])


This newsletter was written by Sarah Mirk. Drop her a line (mailto:[email protected]?subject=weekly%20reveal%20feedback) with feedback and ideas.

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