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Jungho Kim for The Washington Post An aerial drone view of an Amazon fulfillment center in Tracy, California, in September.
The Washington Post / Caroline O’Donovan
12:52 JST, November 28, 2024
Safety advocates are suing the federal workplace safety regulator in an attempt to reveal more details about three fatalities at Amazon warehouses during a summer 2022 heat wave in New Jersey. The complaint filed Tuesday against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the agency has failed to respond to public records requests seeking documents about the incidents.
OSHA investigated the three deaths, as the agency is required to do for all workplace fatalities. It ruled in at least one case that the death was not work-related and has not issued citations for any of the incidents.
Daniel Schlademan, an activist with Warehouse Life, the campaign behind the suit, is seeking inspection records and other documents from OSHA, including video of the incidents. His suit alleges that co-workers and family members of some of the workers who died have questioned Amazon’s response to the episodes.
“New Jersey workers and the public deserve to know the full circumstances surrounding these tragic deaths,” the lawsuit reads. “By accessing these records, the public can better understand what conditions led to these fatalities, whether Amazon adhered to safety regulations, and if any measures were taken to prevent further harm.”
Warehouse Life is advocating for proposed heat safety regulations in New Jersey, which the suit claims would have been likely to protect workers such as those who died.
OSHA said it is currently processing the records request. “While the agency strives to provide timely responses to [Freedom of Information Act] requests, it is important that each request undergoes the proper reviews necessary before moving forward,” agency spokesperson Paloma Rentería said in an emailed statement.
Amazon said the deaths were “tragic incidents” that activists were trying to “twist … into something they weren’t.”
“As is standard in these situations, OSHA conducted thorough investigations and closed all three without citations or allegations of wrongdoing on Amazon’s part, and there’s no evidence that heat was a contributing factor in any of them,” said company spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
The first of the three fatal incidents occurred on July 13, 2022, when Rafael Mota Frias died while working at an Amazon warehouse in Carteret, New Jersey. At the time, the state was in the midst of a heat wave, with high temperatures in the 90s.
In January 2023, OSHA ruled that his death, which occurred around 8 a.m., was caused by “a cardiac event” that was “unrelated to work.”
The new lawsuit says some co-workers who were present felt heat that could have played a role in his death, citing news reports at the time that said he complained about the heat and requested additional fans the day he died.
Later that month, Rodger Boland fell off a stepladder at Amazon at 8 a.m. on July 24, and later died of his head injury. According to the suit, Amazon managers told staff that his fall was related to a seizure condition, but the suit says he didn’t have such a condition and questioned whether heat played a role. The high temperature that day in New Jersey was 95 degrees.
The third Amazon worker, Eric Vadinsky, died on Aug. 4 of that year.
As climate change makes heat waves more frequent, lawmakers across the country, including in New Jersey, have advocated for workplace rules that hold employers responsible for protecting workers from extreme temperatures.
States including California, Washington, Colorado, Minnesota and Oregon have passed heat safety standards. The U.S. Department of Labor has proposed a federal rule, but that is unlikely to become law under President-elect Donald Trump, who has said he intends to loosen workplace safety regulations.
According to the lawsuit, Schlademan filed a Freedom of Information Act request for inspection records including interview notes, photos and videos on Aug. 14 of this year. OSHA has not yet provided the documents he requested. Typically, inspection documents become public once investigations have closed.
Schlademan works for a nonprofit called Online 2 Offline Strategy Group, which helped organize the Warehouse Life campaign, which is also supported by union-backed nonprofit National Jobs With Justice, according to the suit.
There are currently multiple open investigations into workplace safety at Amazon, including one spearheaded by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), and another by the Justice Department, which is looking into the accuracy of Amazon’s injury reporting.
Amazon, which said it accurately records injuries and has a strong heat-management program, has previously been cited for safety violations during extreme heat at an airport facility in San Bernardino, California. It was initially fined more than $14,000 but is contesting those violations.
