Report: workers delivering Amazon’s packages are injured at a “shocking rate”

A new report published by the Strategic Organizing Center reveals that delivery workers employed by Amazon's subcontracted third-party partners experience on-the-job injuries at a rate significantly higher than both Amazon's direct employees and standard industry peers.

Analyzing workplace safety data submitted to federal regulators, the labor advocacy group estimated that nearly one in five of these contracted drivers suffered workplace injuries severe enough to be officially recorded. The most common physical harms experienced by these workers include motor vehicle collisions, slips and falls, dog encounters, and chronic strain injuries from repetitive physical tasks. This comparison highlights a stark discrepancy, suggesting that Amazon-associated contractors face far greater workplace risks than general delivery personnel.\n\nThe labor coalition attributes these elevated injury numbers directly to the intense performance pressures and rigid delivery quotas established by Amazon, which reportedly demand package drops every few minutes over ten-hour shifts while failing to accommodate local environmental difficulties like narrow streets. Despite closely monitoring these external drivers through in-cab artificial intelligence cameras and proprietary mobile applications, the corporation continues to categorize them as independent contractors rather than direct employees. Critics argue that this employment structure allows the e-commerce giant to evade direct responsibility for driver welfare, avoid regulatory liabilities, and omit these high injury statistics from its official corporate sustainability reports, leaving shareholders with an incomplete picture of the company's actual safety record.