Amazon fulfillment centre in NYC has alarming rate of injuries

San Francisco, Nov 26 (IANS) One of Amazon’s largest urban fulfillment centres located in New York City and opened in September 2018, has an alarming rate of injuries, media reports said.

Now, leaked company documents reveal that injury rates at the warehouse, known as JFK8, are over three times the industry average. What’s unclear is if these numbers are at all anomalous compared to Amazon’s other facilities, Gizmodo reported on Monday.

Reports have surfaced that underline the extent of the injury epidemic based on the retail giant’s internal incident reports. They also underscore the pressure employees are facing to hit their targets.

Injury records from 23 of Amazon’s US centres indicated an incident rate of 9.6 serious injuries per 100 full-time employees last year. The industry average for 2018 was reportedly four.

According to the Atlantic, some centres, such as the Eastvale warehouse, were especially dangerous.

Amazon, however, denied that its “fulfillment centres are unsafe and efforts to paint our workplace as such based solely on the number of injury recordings is misleading given the size of our workforce”, according to Engadget.

As of June, it employed 125,000 people at its 110 American fulfillment centres.