Amazon does not have a perfect track record regarding warehouse working conditions, especially when robots are involved. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal magazine published research in 2020 suggesting that the incidence of major accidents caused by Amazon workers at automated warehouses was 50 per cent greater than at facilities that did not utilise robots between 2016 and 2019.
According to the study, the deployment of robots caused Amazon to raise employees’ quotas, asking them to scan up to 400 items each hour when they were previously required to scan 100. “The statistics back up the testimonies of Amazon warehouse employees and former safety specialists who say the corporation has exploited the robots to ramp up production quotas to the point where people can’t keep up without injuring themselves,” according to the study.
