Amazon Sues Washington State’s Department of Labor & Industries
The complaint claims that citation abatement rules violate the right to a due process.
- By Alex Saurman
- Oct 07, 2022
Amazon is suing the state of Washington’s Department of Labor & Industries (L&I), claiming a violation of the right to a due process.
Earlier this week, Amazon filed a complaint in Seattle alleging that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause is being violated by the Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act.
The story starts at the Amazon Kent, Washington fulfillment center. In March 2022, L&I cited the company for “unsafe work practices.” According to a news release, the agency “found 10 of the 12 processes L&I evaluated create a serious hazard for work-related back, shoulder, wrist, and knee injuries” and issued a willful violation and a fine of $60,000.
Amazon challenged these allegations, and a hearing is scheduled for next year. Here is where the lawsuit begins. In the complaint, Amazon claims that even though they are challenging the allegations, under L&I law, they first must “abate the alleged hazards” before the hearing occurs or they can accrue fines, about $70,000 per day the alleged hazards go unfixed. (The normal accrual rate is $7,000 per day, but Amazon’s case brings it up to $70,000 per day, according to the complaint.)
In 2012, L&I enacted the “Stay of Abatement Date” rule that requires employers to “correct or abate” any alleged hazards, whether the company files to appeal the citations or not, according to L&I. The employer can file a request for a stay of abatement date. This allows the date to “abate or correct” hazards to be “put on hold or suspended until the appeal is resolved.”
The e-commerce company also claims in the complaint that when challenging an allegation, they have to “sign an ‘Employer Certification of Abatement Form’ that requires that employers admit – under risk of criminal penalties – that ‘hazards’ exist.”
“This highly unusual structure stacks the deck in the Department’s favor, leaving employers no meaningful opportunity to contest an abatement requirement,” the complaint says.
Amazon has been featured in news a few times this year regarding worker safety practices.
In April, the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) published a report about Amazon facility workers’ serious injury rate. The report claimed that in 2021, the rate was 6.8 per 100 workers. Other warehouses reported an injury rate of 3.3 per 100 workers.
Another report by the SOC published in May 2022 highlighted the injury rate for Amazon delivery contractors, known as Delivery Service Partners, and alleged an increase from 2020 to 2021. In 2021, the injury rate for these workers was 18.3 per 100 workers or almost one out of every five workers. In 2020, the injury rate was only 13.3 per 100 workers, the report said.
In June, Amazon was among more than 15 organizations to sign a musculoskeletal disorder pledge to reduce these injuries.
Photo credit: Mike Mareen / Shutterstock.com
About the Author
Alex Saurman is a former Content Editor for Occupational Health & Safety,who has since joined OH&S’s client services team. She continues to work closely with OH&S’s editorial team and contributes to the magazine.