Tech Won't Save Us - The Injury Crisis in Amazon Warehouses w/ Will Evans

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

Paris Marx is joined by Will Evans to discuss how excessive productivity targets are causing high rates of injury at Amazon warehouses, how executives have misled the public about the problem, and what that suggests about the impacts of the company’s “customer obsession.”Will Evans is a reporter at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Read his investigation about Amazon’s safety crisis. Follow Will on Twitter as @willCIR.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.Read the plan for the future of the show and supporter benefits on Patreon.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.Also mentioned in this episode:Paris reflected on what Will’s investigation suggested about the relationship between consumerism and workers’ rights for NBC News.Will did an earlier investigation about safety (or the lack thereof) at Tesla.Brian Merchant wrote an “op-ed from the future” looking at how technology hides the harm to workers in a fictional fully automated Amazon warehouse.Support the show

I think it really does raise the question of what do customers want? Do customers want convenience and speed at the expense of workers? That is what Amazon is betting on. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Will Evans. Will is a reporter at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, and in this episode we talk about a recent report that he published looking into injuries at Amazon warehouses across the United States. In that report, Will finds that Amazon's rate of serious injury is almost double the national average for warehouses, and that not only is management not

doing enough to try to bring that down because the rate is actually going up, but executives are misleading the public about what is actually happening in the warehouses. As we head into the peak holiday season, I think this is a really important conversation to have because it gives people that information that they really should know about how the retailers, where they'll be buying all the gifts and decorations and things that they need for the holidays, are treating the workers that fulfill those orders. Before we get into the conversation, I just wanted to say thank you to the new people who supported the podcast on Patreon since last week. Since then, the new logo has been finalized. I'm finishing up the slightly updated website before we get a more fully featured one. And the new benefit tiers will be in place before the

beginning of December. And I have written a bit about that. If you didn't read it last week, the link is in the show notes. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada. You can find more information about that in the show notes as well. And obviously, if you like the show, please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts because that really helps. Make sure to let any friends or colleagues know or share the episode on social media if you like our conversation. And again, if you want to support the work that I put into making this show every single week, and to ensure that I can keep doing that work and growing the podcast in the future, please go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and become a supporter.

Enjoy the episode. Will, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thanks for having me on. It's great to speak with you. You had this really fantastic report that you did, this investigation on the injuries at Amazon that I really wanted to speak to you about, especially now that we are entering this holiday period that's a really busy one for Amazon and many retailers. But this year in particular, I think we're going to be seeing a lot more shopping happening online because of the pandemic. And so I wanted to start by just kind of getting

some context into why you decided to look into Amazon in particular. You know, last year, you did an initial investigation on Amazon's injury rates and follow that up this year with this much more comprehensive one. And I'm sure there are, you know, a lot of different investigations that you could have taken on in that time. So why did you decide to focus on Amazon? You know, I'd done a series of stories on worker safety at Tesla, actually. And as I was concluding that series, a couple of people had said, hey, you know, you should check out Amazon. And I mean, it's a good idea. There had been a fair amount of coverage of working conditions at Amazon, hearing from workers and their experiences. And then Amazon would basically deny what the workers were saying. So it was out there, but it wasn't, I felt like there could be more there to do something more comprehensive or

conclusive. So I thought I'd check it out. And I just reached out to a bunch of workers and actually former safety managers. I specifically looked for former Amazon safety managers to just get a sense of what they thought. Is it a big problem there? Is there something that I should look into? And not really knowing what they would come back with. I had learned from that Tesla investigation that safety professionals are some of the best sources when you look at this stuff, because they really, you know, they got into it, into the field, because they really care about worker safety. So they have this sense of whether things are working the way they're supposed to. And what I heard back was, there was a real problem at Amazon. It was a systemic problem. It was a problem that the safety team can't even handle. That's what I kept hearing is that, you know, there's no way they're going to solve safety and reduce injuries at Amazon because production is the priority and because the demands on

the workers and the demands for speed and efficiency are just so high. And one of the safety managers I talked to in particular said, hey, you know, our injury rates are off the charts, you got to check them out. So that started me on a adventure to find the injury rates. And I thought that would be a, you know, one way of actually finding the data, the numbers that the company couldn't deny, because they're reported by the company itself. Your investigation gives us a really good picture of what is actually happening in Amazon. So I want to dig into some of those findings, right? And obviously, the key one is

about Amazon's injury rate, which is not only about double the national average for warehouses in the United States, but you know, your investigation found that it's actually been getting progressively worse through the years. It's not been getting better. So what does this suggest about how the company treats its workers? And how have executives' public statements kind of differed from what they've been saying internally? Yeah, that was one of the key things that we noticed was that when we looked at the numbers and when we looked at their internal safety reports, they really conflicted with what the company was saying publicly to the press, to lawmakers. Amazon has had this public claim that it's getting better, that continuous improvement is its philosophy for safety, that things are safe. And what the

numbers showed was that the injury rates were going up over the last four years, they've gotten worse. And that's right, the rate of serious injuries, so that's injuries that would prevent you from doing your normal job, either you're off work, or you need some kind of light duty job, the rate of those injuries is nearly double the industry average and has been going up. So we started kind of fact-checking the public claims that the company has made about safety. And one of them, which was interesting to me because we didn't really have a good way of fact-checking it before, but it didn't sound right. They said that injuries don't go up during the busiest times, Prime Day and the holiday shopping season,

that you may have more injuries, but you also have a lot more workers working. And so the rate of injuries doesn't go up. But we found that was just completely false. I mean, the injury rates spike exactly at those times. You can see it in their own numbers. You know, you just do a line chart and you see these giant spikes for Prime Day and for the holidays. So I'm not really sure how they could claim that. Yeah, it's definitely worrying to see that, you know, that these executives are saying things that are completely contradicted by their own data. And, you know, until investigations like yours, there's no way for the public or journalists or anyone else to be able to say like, wait, this is not accurate. And, you know, as you say there, like the rate

that you found was 7.7 series injuries per 100 employees in, I believe that was 2019. And, you know, to me, I'm certainly not an expert on safety in warehouses or anything like that. But that seems really high. And that seems like there's a lot of workers that are being put at risk when they go to work every day, because this company is not taking the proper actions to keep employees safe. I mean, that's the rate, right? And we're talking thousands of people and not all injuries are lifelong debilitating injuries, but many of them are. I mean, I've talked to a lot of these workers who are just in pain. You know, they've been in pain for years. They can't do certain

basic things. You know, I talked to a worker who hurt her back and it resulted in her not being able to do her Amazon job, but also other jobs and also, you know, just basic things at home. Can't sit down for too long. Can't sit down for too long, can't stand up for too long, can't walk for too long, has a hard time climbing the stairs, stuff like that. Other people have these repetitive strain injuries that affect their wrists, their elbows, people hurt their knees, their shoulders, they get concussions from falling objects, all kinds of things. And the consequences for those can be pretty serious. And, you know, I've talked to people who said, I liked this job. I wanted this job.

It was an important job for the money and for the benefits, but it's just not worth it because it's destroyed my physical health. It's certainly worrying to hear those things, right? Because, you know, this is happening to thousands's certainly worrying to hear those things, right? Because, you know, this is happening to thousands of workers and out of those thousands, there are definitely going to be people whose lives are forever changed because of this injury that possibly could have been prevented if the company put in place measures that would protect them. So I wanted to ask you, like, we see that this injury rate is high. What are kind of the reasons

that we see higher injuries at Amazon is high. What are kind of the reasons that we see higher injuries at Amazon and particularly during these peak periods of Prime Day and around the holidays? What the safety professionals say is that it has a lot to do with the strain that's being put on the workers to do the same thing over and over again under a lot of pressure at increasing speed. So these workers, I mean, it might help to just think about what they're doing day in, day out. For example, it depends on the warehouse, but you have a worker who's picking out your order. They are responsible for picking out hundreds of orders an hour, and they're being tracked every time they scan an item. It feeds it into a system that's tracking them every moment down to the second and calculating their rate and comparing it to the rate they're supposed to hit.

And if they don't hit their numbers, they can be written up. And if they get written up too much, they can be fired. So they're under a lot of pressure. The numbers keep going up in terms of what they're responsible for. It can be up to 400 items an hour, for example. And you already have 10-hour shifts. And during the holidays, there's often mandatory overtime, which is overtime you can't say no to. And so they're doing 60 hours a week or 12-hour shifts. And it's exhausting. It's hard work.

During the normal times. And during the busiest times, Amazon needs to get out so many packages. I mean, some warehouses will put out a million packages a day in the peak times. Everyone's geared up for it. They're hiring a lot of new people also during the holidays. Those people may not be used to the job. They might not have the training that they need. And they're crammed into these warehouses where everyone's under a lot of pressure and stress and exhaustion. And so that's where you're seeing the injuries, both from the repetition without breaks. I mean, there are breaks, but there's not enough. And with the speed pressure, people take shortcuts to hit their

numbers. And you end up having safety accidents. For example, instead of getting a ladder to get something off a high shelf, you just reach up and grab it, get on your tiptoes, whatever, make it work, make it happen. A lot of people talk about all the different things, you know, instead of getting someone else to lift that something heavy, do it yourself, just get it done because you're under pressure. And the safety team knows this, you know, the people that I talked to said, look, it's not that complicated. You have to lower the production expectations on the workers. But that isn't a conversation that can even be had. Right. And in the report, you described how Amazon set a target to lower its injury rate in 2018 by 20%, and they actually went up. And

then the next year, they put another target in to decrease it by 5%, but that injury rate rose again, right? And you described how, you know, there are pilot programs to kind of bring in things that would improve the work environment, but they're inconsistently applied. And in many cases, they get removed during these peak periods, right? And you also described how there simply aren't enough safety staff to ensure that these things are properly followed, maintained, implemented. And I remember reading that a safety officer told you that he would see management seeing unsafe work practices being done, but would let them go because that, you know, hit the targets, the really strict targets that workers need to meet, that, you know, even those things that they're trying to implement aren't really making a

difference. That's right. I mean, it's not that the company isn't trying anything. The things that they're doing are not working enough to actually make things safer. You know, Amazon points to they're spending a lot of money on safety. They have a lot of safety staff. And that may be true. But they also have, I mean, such an enormous workforce that the safety staff, at least a lot of, you know, cases that I've looked at, has not been adequate. And the things they're doing, these safety initiatives, by and large, they're looking at design changes, technological fixes. What's something that we can implement without actually changing the demands on the worker? There are a couple things that they looked at doing, like rotating workers, that could

have a significant impact on reducing repetitive strain injuries, things like that. But those weren't applied across the board. You know, it didn't seem to catch on. It wasn't a, it's unclear how much of that they're doing. And part of it is, you know, the thing that you hear over and over again is that they say safety is number one. They tell workers how to do the job safely. But at the end of the day, production is the number one priority. And so safety goes out the window when you have to get those packages out the door. And that goes for the worker who's taking risks in order to hit their numbers. It goes for the managers who look the other way. It goes for the safety managers who see a problem, propose a fix, and then get ignored.

I want to pick up on that point you made about the technological fixes, right? Because technology and automation also plays into your story and what's going on here. Because there's been a big push in recent years for Amazon to roll out more robots, these kind of Kiva robots that have shelves to move items around, you know, certain sections of some of the warehouses. Not all of them are using these robots at this point. And, you know, Amazon has said, and you've quoted their statements, where they say that these robots and this automation makes the work safer. But what you actually found was that the warehouses where these robots are used are generally warehouses where the injury rates are even higher. And you looked at one in Washington

near Amazon's own headquarters where the rate of serious injuries was 22 for every 100 workers. So it's much higher than, you know, at these regular warehouses. So what is the reason when we look at this, when we look at the implementation warehouses. So what is the reason when we look at this, when we look at the implementation of these robots, why is that corresponding with even higher injury rates among the workers? Yeah, this really goes to the heart of your podcast, I think, and was one of the, you know, interesting things that we heard early on, but couldn't prove it until we had the data. And it showed this really interesting unintended consequence of the technology that they've introduced. I mean, this is a company that has

had countless stories in the media about how amazing their technology is. You know, they invite the media to come into the warehouses and see the dance of the robots and look at the robots go. It's amazing. And it's great for the workers. And that's been something that's been repeated over and over again for years, that it's great for the workers. And theoretically, that could be true. I mean, what the robots allow for is for the workers to not have to walk miles of warehouse floor to find the right order. In the non-robotic warehouses, it's like, imagine just a big warehouse and you're trying to find the right order. In the non-robotic warehouses, it's like imagine just a big warehouse and you're trying to find the right order. And so people talk about walking miles and miles a day and it being hard on their feet. Instead, at the robotic warehouses, you stand at your workstation for

10 hours a day and the robots bring things to you. The problem with that is that the pace gets ramped up. The efficiency that the robots allow for is then passed on to the worker who has to, instead of picking 100 orders an hour, now has to do 200 and now 300 and now up to 400 orders an hour. It just keeps getting ratcheted up. You know, I mean, I talked to people who said, you know, we just had no idea how this would affect the workers when we implemented it. We thought it was a good idea, but it wasn't really about the workers either. It was about speed and efficiency, but they didn't anticipate it. the numbers show the impact for years. So this isn't like a new problem. This is going back at least to 2016. And the government actually inspected one of these workplaces in 2015 and said, these are ergonomic hazards, basically having people doing these repetitive things

over and over again for 10 hours a day. They need more breaks, they need to be rotated. This is a strain on the body. But that wasn't heated. And that's still what they're doing in the in the robotic warehouses. And Amazon's building more and more of them. That's the way of the future is increasingly automated warehouses. It's interesting because at the beginning of all this, the concern I think was, will these robots replace the workers? Will we lose our jobs? And Amazon was very careful to say, no, no, no, we're going to hire even more people with these robots. And that was true. These automated warehouses have thousands of people in it working alongside the robots. What they didn't talk about is how it was going to affect their jobs and make

their jobs even harder. Time and time again, we see how technologies are implemented. And, you know, often the promise is that this will be a good thing for workers, or it will create new jobs, or, you know, it will make things easier at work for workers. And then a few years down the line, when it's actually looked into, it comes out that those claims were not accurate. And I think we've seen that time and time again with the gig companies and, you know, now with Amazon as well. And so you talked about how Amazon got a lot of positive press for putting in these robots and was able to make a lot of claims. And, you know, now it's quite a number of years later that you were able to do an investigation and actually get conclusive proof that that was not happening. And I find

that a lot of these really try to avoid that transparency and avoid sharing information that would potentially give a negative image to the things that they're trying to do. Do you think that that makes it harder for us to actually understand what's going on here and to really hold them to account for what they say and what they're doing. You know, I guess, like, what are the implications of that? And do you think that there are ways that we can, you know, improve it and ensure that they can't get away with doing those things? The lack of transparency makes it a lot harder. That's the crux of what we have been reporting on is that these have just, I mean, they've been misleading the public for

years. And then when we tried to, you know, when I straight up asked them for their injury rates, they said they wouldn't give them to me. When I tried to get them from workers who have a right to request injury records from their own work site, the company, first of all, ignored many of those requests that they were legally required to respond to. They stamped the records confidential and told workers to keep them confidential, which freaked out a lot of people. So they made it difficult to get this stuff. And then they got, you know, they were displeased that I was getting these records. They argued in court. We filed a lawsuit to try to get some of these records

through the Freedom of Information Act. And Amazon argued in court that these were confidential and should not be made public. So yeah, the company is very is bent on keeping their basic safety numbers secret. And those are the numbers that show what's going on. You know, I mean, it's not the only thing that that we need to know, but it's a pretty crucial, fundamental thing. It's been difficult. That's why you need investigative reporting. And that's why, you know, you need people to speak out and you need whistleblowers and you need, you know, people to leak records and things like that to get to the point where we actually can hold institutions and companies accountable when they're not willing to be transparent. Yeah, no, I completely agree.

And, you know, I think reveal plays a really important role in that in, you know, doing these investigations that maybe are not done at other places. And I think it's a big issue that we've seen funding for investigative journalism tend to decline along with, you know, the decline in revenue for journalism in general, right? And so I think what you're describing here, when we look at, you know, the peak periods, when we look at just in general at Amazon, when we look at what's happening with the technology, with the robots, we're seeing that there's a consistent issue with workers being overworked and forced to meet higher production targets that are, you know, making this work unsafe because workers have to work so quickly to try to keep up with these targets to keep their job, right? And you describe how

safety workers told you that, you know, as I mentioned, management would see unsafe work and wouldn't correct it. And in some cases, they would even offer pizza parties for injury-free shifts, which would incentivize workers not to report their injuries, right? You described other safety measures that we got into, but what does this kind of tell us about what management is trying to do about injuries? Because they won't address these production targets, but then they're ignoring issues, they're offering pizza parties to try to to try to keep those numbers low to to not really pay attention to the issues that are happening in

their workplaces. While the people who do that work who are really essential to delivering the service to Amazon's customers, that creates immense revenue for the company. What does that tell us about, you know, how they see those workers and whether they're actually committed to providing a safe workplace? What you just said just made me think of how they're handling the medical care that injured workers get. I mean, that gives, that provides some insight into that. I mean, there's this friction between, they want to get the injury numbers down. I mean, the injury numbers don't look good. So in that sense, they're trying to lower the injury numbers down. I mean, the injury numbers don't look good. So in that sense,

they're trying to lower the injury numbers, but they don't want to lower their production numbers. So how do you fix that? In one warehouse that we looked into really deeply in the Denver area in Colorado, you had a warehouse, it was a robotic warehouse, it had high injury rates, they knew they were really high. And instead of focusing on what was going on in the warehouse, they focused on what was going on in the medical clinic where injured workers were going. Injured workers were going to outside medical clinics where they would get treatment, and that treatment would force the company to record their injuries. That's the framework for how injury recording works in the US. It's based on what the injury required. If it requires you to take time off work because your doctor said you

need time off work, or if it requires you to have a different job because your doctor said you can't use your right hand, or you have to sit for four hours a day, or you can't climb stairs or whatever. All of those things require the company to record the injuries. So they looked at that. They actually fired a clinic and hired a new one that was promising to lower injury rates by avoiding treating workers in a certain way. And I talked to some medical providers there who were very concerned, upset, and frustrated because they weren't allowed to treat injured Amazon workers the way they thought they should be treated to help them heal. They were told, don't make this injury recordable. Send the injured worker back to work because if

you put any restrictions on what this worker can do in order to help them heal, then Amazon will have to record that injury. Don't do that. And I mean, this is rare, you know, for medical providers to reach out and talk to a reporter because they don't feel like they can do an ethical job because they're under so much pressure to help Amazon lower its injury rates. I mean, that's remarkable. And so we reported that out and heard from these medical providers who felt like they weren't giving injured Amazon workers what they needed to get better. that, right? That instead they focused on the clinic and ensuring that the clinic didn't provide services that would have to be recorded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the United States that would show that they have a higher rate of injury, right? So when we look at that story and when we look at what they're doing to kind of ensure that workers don't get the treatment that they need for these injuries that they have.

We touched on this a bit earlier, but what does that really mean like long term for these workers who aren't having injuries treated when they need them treated? And I'm not exactly sure how this works, but would that suggest that the real injury rate could be even higher at some of these warehouses? Yeah, I think that that is what it suggests. Well, first of all, your first question, I mean, it can make your injury worse. It can change your injury from being something that's easily treatable and will go away to something that is more serious, maybe won't go away, will last longer, you know, will leave you in pain for longer periods of time. I mean, it's not good if your medical provider thinks you need something and isn't allowed to give you that rest. That's a problem. We found in that warehouse that when

they got this new clinic, the injury rate went down. So that would suggest that, and the medical provider said it, you know, there were people who should have been given job restrictions and other kinds of treatment that would make their injuries count. And they weren't. So those injuries went uncounted. In other cases, OSHA has found that, for example, injured workers go to the to the on-site medical clinic, their health clinics that that can only give first aid and they're on the warehouse grounds. And in some cases, workers are discouraged from seeking outside medical care and just sent back to work. Here's some ice, grab a Tylenol and, you know, maybe wrap up your leg or whatever basic first aid measures and go back to work. Again, if they're

doing that with more serious injuries, they can get worse. They also may not be counting those injuries. Amazon got in trouble for undercounting injuries significantly in the past. And now it says it goes above and beyond. In fact, Amazon's argument is that its injury rates are high because they're so aggressive at counting injuries that they basically count everything, no matter how large or small. This is the kind of language that the company uses. And we just found that not to be the case. I mean, you look at this example where medical providers are under pressure to not treat workers in order to keep the injury not recordable. I mean, that's not an example of aggressively counting injuries. But that is what the company

continues to claim in order to downplay its injury numbers. You know, I think it's super worrying, right? And you described how OSHA has looked into Amazon several times and found that, you know, they're not recording all the injuries. They're discouraging workers from reporting injuries or from seeking outside medical attention for the injuries that they've received. Can you give us a bit of an idea of does OSHA have very much power to force companies to change their practices? Or, you know, over a number of decades with funding cuts and things like that, has their power just kind of

been reined in and they can issue reports but not do a whole lot beyond that? It's not an extremely powerful agency and it's faced budget cuts and staffing constraints and the fines that it has given are pretty small. And for example, it's been a number of times when the agency found that the company was doing that, was discouraging workers from seeking outside medical care, providing improper medical care in the warehouses. And the company didn't even get cited. OSHA didn't even issue a citation, even though they came back again and again and found the same problems. And even if they were to get cited, I mean, the fines would be pretty small.

I looked pretty deeply into a case where an Amazon worker actually died on the job, crushed by a forklift. And it was a terrible accident, really tragic. And this happened in Indiana. And the state OSHA agency went in and inspected and found safety violations and issued a fine of $28,000. That was after the death of a worker. Amazon put up a fight. They said they opposed the citation. And the state caved and said, we're going to just delete it all. You won't have to pay anything. And we're going to call it employee misconduct, basically blaming the accident on the worker. I talked to the safety inspector who went in and issued all the findings.

And he said he was pressured by state officials who were concerned about bringing, at the same time, Amazon was looking for second headquarters. It had this big like national sweepstakes, you know, which state is going to win Amazon's second headquarters. And Indiana was in the running and the Indiana state officials really wanted to bring Amazon to their state. As that was going on, they pressured the inspector to back off and they wiped clean the safety fines. So that just gives you a little bit of insight into the kind of power that the company wields and into the ability of government to hold it accountable for these safety things. The other thing that you keep in mind is the injury rates we're talking

about. They're very high, but there is no ceiling for injury rates. There's no federal regulation for ergonomic hazards or for speed. So even if a safety inspector went into a warehouse and said, your injury numbers are off the charts, and you know, hundreds of people are getting injured, there's nothing they can really do about that. Because there's no regulation to say you can't have this many injuries, or there's no regulation for ergonomic hazards. At one point, there was, and it was repealed by Republican Congress and President in years past. And so that doesn't exist today. I'm just like shaking my head as you describe all this. Like on one hand, it makes me feel like super sad for the workers, but also it makes me feel really angry just to see how like these structures are designed in a way that really

benefit these massive corporations over the much less powerful workers, the people who have little power to really push back against this massive corporation. And I think that really plays into kind of the final question that I wanted to ask you. You know, Amazon talks a lot about how it's customer obsessed and it's really focused on serving the customer, providing a great service, providing low prices, etc., etc. And so I think your story presents a natural question about the relationship between consumerism and workers' rights.

You know, we're entering this holiday period, as I said. We likely won't see kind of the Black Friday stampedes that we usually see this year because of, you know, the pandemic. But people will still be buying a lot, and a lot more of that purchasing will go online, and a lot more of that purchasing will go to Amazon. And that obviously, as your report suggests, presents a risk that more workers will be injured while they prepare those packages for delivery, if not also, you know, having the risk of contracting COVID-19. And so it seems like that

customer obsession very much comes at the expense of workers. You know, that focus on productivity, that focus on increasing profits, and workers' safety is not put at such a high priority, I guess. So do you think that this investigation that you did and these findings and seeing how this company acts suggests anything about the need to re-examine our relationship to consumption, to acknowledge that harm can come to workers throughout the supply chain as a result of it. And we need to pay more attention to that and ensure that larger structures are changed in order to rectify those issues.

I think it really does raise the question of what do customers want? Do customers want convenience and speed at the expense of workers? That is what Amazon is betting on. That's its number one leadership principle. And for people not familiar with Amazon, this is really baked into, this isn't just talk. Customer obsession is what dominates the Amazon culture, leadership decisions. And one executive I talked to said it really can blind you to everything else because that is really what you're focused on. And so in that environment, working conditions and workers' rights are secondary to delighting the customer.

Is the customer okay with that? That's the question I keep coming up against in reporting on this. I mean, this is a direct result of getting so many packages so quickly, so conveniently to your door. That speed and efficiency is injuring way more people than it should. Will anything be done about it? You know, I think the CEO, Jeff Bezos, was posed with a question at a shareholder meeting where they asked the companies coming under this increased scrutiny, will the scrutiny lead to customers pulling away or will the scrutiny affect how customers feel about Amazon? And he thought about it for a minute and he said no. So that that is the question. I mean, will customers care about this? My hope, at least, is that reporting like yours will, you know, help people realize what's

actually happening and hopefully start to change things like that, you know, both in the minds of consumers, but also on the legislative level to ensure that workers are being taken care of and that it's not just all about the bottom line and the productivity. Will, you've done these investigations on Tesla, on Amazon. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do next. And I really thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. Thank you so much for your interest and for taking the time to go through it and hear about it. I really appreciate it. Will Evans is a reporter at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, and you can find a link to his investigation in the show notes. If you want to follow him on

Twitter, he's at WillCIR. You can also follow me at at Paris Marks, and you can in the show notes. If you want to follow him on Twitter, he's at WillCIR. You can also follow me at at Paris Marks and you can follow the show at at TechWon'tSaveUs. TechWon'tSaveUs is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada and you can find information about that in the show notes. And if you want to support the work that I put into making this show every week,

you can go to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus and become a supporter. Thanks for listening.