“Amazon presented persuasive evidence it has a robust safety and health program. It fully communicates safety and health policies to its employees,” said Judge Stephen Pfeifer in the decision issued Wednesday.
“We appreciate that the court took a close look at the facts about how we prioritize employees’ health and safety, recognized the progress we’ve made, and vacated all the citations at the heart of this case,” Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel said in an email statement.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
The court’s decision was filed with Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries on Wednesday. Officials are working to redact the document, and plan to officially release it Monday, state officials said.
“We disagree both with the judge’s characterization of the facts and interpretation of the law, and are already preparing our appeal,” said Matt Ross, a spokesman for the Washington state labor department.
The Amazon case in Washington began last summer, stemming from allegations by state labor regulators that the company had created an unsafe working environment. The state alleged that Amazon put warehouse staff at unnecessary risk of ergonomic injury and musculoskeletal disorders, and willfully continued to do so after state intervention. Amazon appealed those citations, which have now been dismissed.
In the case, the state had argued that Amazon’s warehouses failed to comply with the rules of ergonomic science, and that the layout of the facilities would have to be altered to protect workers. Amazon said its process is unique, and that workplace standards for typical warehouses don’t apply. In his decision, Pfeifer said the state’s argument failed to convince him that “there were economic and technically feasible means to eliminate or materially reduce the alleged hazards beyond which Amazon had already implemented.”
Former Occupational Safety and Health Administration director Debbie Berkowitz said that Washington labor officials can appeal the decision.
“The state clearly showed that Amazon’s warehouse workers have suffered very high numbers of musculoskeletal injuries and that Amazon had not implemented the ergonomic changes needed to prevent these injuries,” she said in an email statement. “Sadly, Amazon still fails to take responsibility for designing the jobs that caused these injuries.”
The federal OSHA has also been investigating reports of alleged ergonomic injuries at Amazon, and could pursue a company-wide settlement strategy, though fines so far have been limited, former OSHA officials previously told The Post.
This month, preliminary results from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)’s senate committee investigation into Amazon worker injuries were released, including findings that during peak periods in 2019 as many as 45 percent of Amazon workers suffered injuries. Amazon disputed those findings saying there was “flawed methodology and gaps in the research.” The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York announced an investigation into Amazon’s workplace injury rate and recordkeeping in 2022, but no findings have been released and the agency has declined requests for comment on its status.
Lawmakers and labor regulators, including OSHA and the National Labor Relations Board, are increasingly under pressure to take action on Amazon workplace issues before the presidential election.
Earlier this year, the state of California fined Amazon $5.9 million for violating a new law limiting workplace productivity quotas, or rules that require employees to complete work at a certain rate of speed. Similar quotas exist in New York, Oregon and Minnesota, and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced federal legislation.
