Getting a few more packages out shouldn’t injure workers or force them to skip lunch or a bathroom break, according to a new U.S. Senate bill that seeks to regulate production quotas for warehouse workers in the Inland Empire and nationwide.
The Warehouse Worker Protection Act, unveiled Thursday, May 2, would ban quotas that the bill’s authors say require workers to move at an unsafe pace, miss restroom breaks or cut corners in their work in order to keep up with expectations.
Mirroring a law already on the books in California, the bill also would require companies to disclose more information about the quotas that workers are expected to meet and to notify them if those standards change.
It also would authorize the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate and intervene if it finds a company is setting a pace of work that increases employees’ risk of injury or withholding information about employee expectations.
“The Warehouse Worker Protection Act is about dignity, safety, and respect for the workers that make companies run,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, said in a news release. “When corporations repeatedly use and abuse warehouse workers, they show us that their number one obligation is to their profits.”
Sens. Tina Smith, D-Minnesota, and Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, are co-sponsoring the bill, which already faces opposition from business groups that argue it’s unnecessary and burdensome.
“(It) is a bad bill whose time has not come,” Marc Freedman, a vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a commentary posted on the chamber’s website.
Inland Empire warehouse workers and their advocates have long complained about being forced to work at breakneck, dangerous speeds to process goods at distribution centers, especially those owned by Amazon.
In 2022, AB 701 became law in California. Described as the first legislation of its kind in the nation, the bill makes it illegal for a worker to be fired for falling short of a quota that interferes with taking a lunch or bathroom break.
Also under AB 701, companies must share productivity requirements and work-speed metrics with employees. Like the Senate bill, it also bars quotas that prevent workers from going to the bathroom or taking a lunch break.
The new bill “(takes) some important steps for stronger protections for warehouse workers and it’s good to see,” said Tim Shadix, legal director for the Ontario-based Warehouse Worker Resource Center.
“It’s providing more transparency and fairness in the workplace around how work is measured and quantified and monitored.”
It can be “a very opaque process” for workers to understand productivity measures and quotas, Shadix said.
“It’s kind of like a sword hanging over their head,” he said. “They know they’re supposed to work as fast as possible, but it’s not always clear how fast and that leads to stress and burnout and also injuries and bad health outcomes.”
The bill “also goes a little farther than California in one great way,” Shadix said. It directs the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to create a national ergonomics standard within three years, he said.
“Workers everywhere desperately need that,” he said. “Ergonomic injuries are one of the largest categories of injuries for workers across many industries and certainly for warehouse workers.”
The release from Markey’s office cites a new study from the National Employment Law Project, which found that one in 15 Amazon warehouse workers sustain injuries, with Amazon accounting for 79% of all large warehouse employment and for 86% of warehouse injuries.
Amazon disputes the notion that its warehouses are dangerous.
According to numbers shared by Amazon spokesperson Rachael Lighty, the company has invested more than $1 billion in technology and training to improve workplace safety and since 2019, “recordable incident” rates improved 24% while lost time rates improved 77%.
Allegations that Amazon’s injury rate is higher than the industry average are misleading because companies like Walmart, Target and Costco report injuries under different OSHA categories, Amazon said.
“It’s a common misperception that Amazon has fixed quotas, but we do not,” the statement provided by Lighty added. “Our Time Logged In policy assesses whether employees are actually working while they’re logged in at their station” and “our employees can see their own performance at any time and can talk to their manager if they’re having trouble finding the information.”
In another commentary on the U.S. chamber website, Freedman said the bill “would bring back the most odious and unworkable regulation the Occupational Safety and Health Administration … has ever issued, a standard regulating ergonomic hazards such as repetitive motions.”
“This would hold employers accountable for employee injuries or strains that happen outside the workplace, and force employers to redesign workplaces based on unproven theories about potential remedies.”
The bill “would also deny employers their due process rights in challenging certain OSHA citations and create a shortcut for unions to organize warehouses,” Freedman added.
While “more needs to be done” to help warehouse workers, “the overall pieces of the bill are strong,” Shadix said.
“These are some very common sense-like first steps to make to provide some basic protections for workers around this growing problem.”
Tribune News Service contributed to this report.
