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Amazon sues Washington state agency over warehouse safety citations

Amazon sued the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries on Oct. 3, asking a federal judge to declare that the state’s process for addressing allegations of serious workplace safety problems violates the due process clause of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, GeekWire reported [1].

The suit is in response to a citation [2] issued in March by the agency at Amazon’s warehouse in Kent, Washington, after an inspection of 12 processes evaluated by the agency found 10 processes create a serious hazard for work-related back, shoulder, wrist and knee injuries. The agency had cited Amazon for similar violations at three Washington locations previously; therefore, the most recent violation was classified as a willful violation and comes with a significantly higher penalty than those issued as a result of earlier inspections, according to the March citation.

According to GeekWire [1], Amazon says there is a lack of “any specific ergonomic standards in either the Washington or federal occupational health and safety laws,” and is asking for “an injunction prohibiting the Department from requiring that Amazon implement costly, burdensome and potentially unnecessary abatement measures until the Department carries its burden of proving that Amazon has, in fact, violated any safety or health regulation.”

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