The introduction of Proteus comes 10 years after Amazon’s acquisition of Kiva Methods, which turned Amazon Robotics. Kiva robots carry as much as 1,000 kilos of buyer orders from storage to human pickers, however function in part of the warehouse the place people can not go.
Strategic Organizing Middle’s well being and security director Eric Frumin says Amazon’s promotion of a brand new robotic that avoids operating into folks is a distraction from the first causes of accidents in its services.
“Amazon has a wonderful capability for creating new and extra glamorous hazards to staff,” Frumin says. “Possibly this robotic can have some new menace to staff, however I am extra involved in regards to the full blindness on the firm relating to the hazards they learn about.” He says these hazards embody requiring staff to carry out quick and repetitive motions that trigger accidents: for instance, when loading vehicles from flooring to ceiling or utilizing handbook pallet jacks.
Frumin was a coauthor on the Strategic Organizing Middle’s evaluation of Amazon filings with OSHA, launched in April. It discovered that since 2017 the corporate’s solely annual decline in employee harm charges came about in 2020, when it briefly lowered employee quotas because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Damage charges then elevated 20 p.c in 2021, the report discovered. It additionally discovered that though Amazon employs one out of three warehouse workers in the US, half of all accidents to warehouse staff occurred in services operated by the corporate. About 90 p.c of accidents at Amazon have been severe sufficient for folks to overlook work or render them incapable of doing common job features.
In March this yr, after inspections of Amazon warehouses within the firm’s residence state of Washington, state regulators fined the corporate $60,000 for “willful, severe violation” of security guidelines that would result in decrease again and higher extremity accidents.
Proteus was launched final month at Amazon’s re:MARS convention alongside different expertise that the corporate claims will enhance security for warehouse staff. A digicam system known as AR ID can mechanically determine packages with out requiring staff to carry a barcode scanner. A robotic known as Cardinal picks up packages as much as 50 kilos, and one other, previously often called Ernie, locations gadgets in containers for storage, a job carried out by individuals who should repeatedly climb stairs to position gadgets in tall carts.
Debbie Berkowitz, a senior coverage adviser and chief of workers at OSHA through the Obama administration, says that Amazon considerably expanded use of robots in its warehouses through the Trump administration, when federal officers weren’t attentive to studies about excessive harm charges. “Basically, no person was watching when this occurred,” says Berkowitz, who within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties labored as a security director for the United Meals and Industrial Staff Union, negotiating with firms that function grocery store inventory warehouses.
“Ultimately, I believe the robots are simply going to make it higher for customers and worse for staff, who’re going to be working more durable and sooner,” Berkowitz says. She believes that Amazon didn’t account for the pure variability in human physique dimension early in its enlargement, resulting in increased charges of musculoskeletal accidents from staff making extremely repetitive however forceful motions.
Brady of Amazon instructed Startup that the corporate seems to be for alternatives to cut back repetitive duties and heavy lifting with the intention to scale back musculoskeletal accidents. “Each time there’s an incident,” he says, “we take a extremely sharp have a look at it and ask ourselves, ‘How can we enhance the system such that this does not occur once more?’” Final month Amazon pledged to cut back musculoskeletal danger and accidents 25 p.c by 2025.
Berkowitz says that if Amazon gave her management of employee security in its warehouses, she would rent ergonomics consultants to go to each Amazon achievement middle and meet with staff, evaluation harm logs, determine which jobs have the very best studies of ache, and start contemplating design modifications to higher shield these staff. “They might actually be a pacesetter right here.”