Bernie Sanders campaigning for President in San Francisco, California, June 2019 credit _ Gage Skidmore – Wikipedia
Bernie Sanders, the Senior U.S. Senator from Vermont, declared war on Amazon, so to speak. Sanders has opened a Senate investigation into Amazon’s warehouse safety practices as part of his overall crusade to crack down on what he believes are unfair employment practices of some of America’s largest corporations.
And Bernie Sanders is in possibly the best position to do just that seeing as how he chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. In that capacity, he sent a letter today to Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy initiating a HELP Committee investigation into the “abysmal” safety record in Amazon’s warehouses and the company’s treatment of workers who he says were injured in those warehouses.
“The company’s quest for profits at all costs has led to unsafe physical environments, intense pressure to work at unsustainable rates, and inadequate medical attention for tens of thousands of Amazon workers every year,” Bernie Sanders wrote in the letter.
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“Amazon is one of the most valuable companies in the world worth $1.3 trillion and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is one of the richest men in the world worth nearly $150 billion,” Bernie Sanders added. “Amazon should be one of the safest places in America to work, not one of the most dangerous. If Amazon can afford to spend $6 billion on stock buybacks last year, it can afford to make sure that its warehouses are safe places to work. If Amazon can afford to pay you $289 million in total compensation over the past two years, it can afford to treat all of its workers with dignity and respect, not contempt. The time has come for Amazon to stop willfully violating workplace safety laws with impunity and commit to changing its operations to protect the health and safety of its workers.”
Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly responded by saying, “We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously. There will always be ways to improve, but we’re proud of the progress we’ve made, which includes a 23% reduction in recordable injuries across our U.S. operations since 2019.”
“There will always be ways for our critics to splice data to suit their narrative, but the fact is, we’ve made progress and our numbers clearly show it,” Kelly added.
In 2006, Bernie Sanders was elected to the U.S. Senate as an independent after 16 years of service as Vermont’s sole congressman in the House of Representatives, elected as a socialist. Sanders, however, caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.
Bernie Sanders is now serving his third term in the U.S. Senate after winning re-election in 2018 with 67 percent of the vote. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he attended James Madison High School, Brooklyn College, and the University of Chicago. After graduating, he moved to Vermont where he worked as a carpenter and documentary filmmaker. In 1981, he was elected as mayor of Burlington, the state’s largest city, by a mere 10 votes.
