Amazon warehouse working conditions and worker injuries have been a constant source of tension between the corporate giant and its critics. A new safety and wellness program is rolling out to all U.S. sites by year-end as Jeff Bezos’s company continues to add a massive amount of new employees.
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos raised a few eyebrows this summer when he returned to Earth after a historic space flight in July and gave a speech thanking company employees and customers, “because you paid for all of this.” The comments came as Amazon, the second-largest employer in the U.S. after Walmart, has faced persistent allegations regarding workplace safety.
The National Council on Occupational Safety and Health included Amazon in its “Dirty Dozen” list of the most dangerous employers in the U.S. Earlier this year, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Amazon for inadequately protecting workers amid the Coronavirus pandemic. While Amazon just finished its third consecutive $100 billion quarter, showing customers continue to shop with the e-commerce giant and it is one of the trillion-dollar-plus tech companies that dominate the market, there is a question of whether more investors will start paying attention to worker safety.
At a time when environmental, social and governance concerns have become a focus on Wall Street, in C-suites and with investors, with global assets under management in ESG funds approaching $2 trillion, according to Morningstar, it is not clear to date that labor issues rate as highly with investors as other core ESG themes, including corporate climate change policies.
Workplace issues are being factored into Amazon’s ESG ratings, but they don’t tip the scales as much as other factors when compared with other large retailers. ESG analysis firm JUST Capital, which rates companies on how “justly” they treat their employees and on workplace safety, gives Amazon and Walmart similar scores. And on another key labor factor, Amazon ranks No. 1: local job creation.
Not all ESG rating models weight worker safety metrics equally across all sectors. According to an MCSI spokesperson, it includes workplace safety in its ESG analyses, but “for industries and companies that are most prone to health and safety concerns, we take a deeper dive into health and safety. These industries typically include extractive operations and heavy manufacturing.”
How workplace safety factors into ESG ratings
Worker safety is an often overlooked element of ESG, and it is one of Amazon’s biggest, hardest-to-solve issues.
Roxana Dobre, associate director of consumer goods research for Sustainalytics, a Morningstar company that calculates ESG risk, said while Amazon’s ESG rating has improved on environmental metrics, it does need to improve in the social category, namely in terms of how it treats employees. Worker safety is a factor in Amazon’s overall ratings and the company recently took a hit,…
Read More: Amazon’s biggest, hardest-to-solve ESG issue may be its own workers