BURSTAmazon has reached a settlement with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over working conditions at the e-commerce giant’s facilities, the Labor Department announced Thursday.
The settlement agreement resolves the worker safety watchdog’s cases against Amazon for ergonomic hazards and requires the company to take measures to protect workers from conditions that could lead to lower back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders.
“This corporate-wide settlement agreement focuses on improving conditions for several hundred thousand Amazon workers nationwide,” Douglas Parker, assistant secretary for Occupational Safety and Health, said in a statement.
“The ball is in the company’s court,” he added. “OSHA stands ready to work with their ergonomics team to evaluate their progress and verify the commitments they made to OSHA.”
Amazon was facing 10 cases that were set to go to trial before the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission early next year, according to the Labor Department.
As part of the settlement agreement, OSHA dismissed nine of the citations and Amazon accepted one, Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel said.
“At the site where we accepted a citation, we’ll make some changes in the process path where employees handle TVs,” Lynch Vogel said in a statement.
“Outside of that, the settlement doesn’t require any engineering controls across the network; rather, OSHA is directing Amazon to continue implementing our existing processes and procedures to reduce ergonomic risk,” she added.
The settlement comes as Amazon workers affiliated with the Teamsters union went on strike in five states Thursday ahead of the Christmas holiday, citing Amazon’s refusal to come to the bargaining table. Amazon contends that the workers are not employees.