Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Just last month, a stunning report showed how Amazon fulfillment centers across the country saw rising injury rates between 2016 and 2019, sourced from internal company data. And now, proposed legislation in Washington state would mean Amazon could pay a higher workers’ compensation premium than other warehouse-owning companies next year.
To make this happen, the state wants to put warehouses that function like Amazon’s into a separate risk classification. While the proposed classification for “fulfillment centers” doesn’t say the word Amazon anywhere, how they are defined seems to fit the description of the company:
Have an online marketplace to sell their own merchandise and third-party sellers’ merchandise;
Sell their own name brand…