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At more than 100 Amazon fulfillment centers across the United States, workers are closely monitored down to the second on how long it takes them to do their job – from loading bins with products to packing boxes and sealing packages so they land “smile side up” at the customer’s door. 

But workers say this intense focus on speed has led to serious injuries that put them out of work for weeks at a time. Amazon closely guards its safety logs and won’t share these numbers with journalists or the public. But through a federal regulatory requirement, reporter Will Evans was able to obtain injury logs from more than 20 fulfillment centers across the U.S. and delve into the company’s opaque safety record. 

Evans found that the serious injury rate at these warehouses is more than double the industry average. At some centers, it is four to six times the average. In the first of a two-part series with PBS NewsHour, Reveal takes a first-ever look at safety records maintained by the nearly trillion-dollar company.

Reporter: Will Evans

Data Reporter: Melissa Lewis

Managing Editor: Andrew Donohue

Producer: Rachel de Leon

Videographers: Rafael Roy, Rachel de Leon

Production Assistant: Skyler Glover

Consulting Producer: Katharine Mieszkowski

Senior Producer/Editor: David Ritsher

Senior Producer: Adam Raney

Executive Editor: Esther Kaplan

Executive Producers: Amanda Pike, Sara Just

Editor in Chief: Matt Thompson

Additional Reporting: Hannah Young and Byard Duncan

Rachel de Leon is a reporter and producer for TV and documentaries for Reveal. She’s worked as a videographer and producer for investigations about caregiver wage theft, fatal accidents at Amazon warehouses, and modern-day redlining. In 2018, she began researching cases of police arresting and charging young people with lying about rape, despite incomplete investigations and the use of questionable interrogation tactics. This became the Netflix original Victim/Suspect, which was released in 2023. De Leon graduated with a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from California State University, Northridge. She’s based in the Bay Area.

Will Evans was a senior reporter and producer for Reveal, covering labor and tech. His reporting prompted government investigations, legislation, reforms and prosecutions. A series on working conditions at Amazon warehouses was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and won a Gerald Loeb Award. His work has also won multiple Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, including for a series on safety problems at Tesla. Other investigations exposed secret spying at Uber, illegal discrimination in the temp industry and rampant fraud in California's drug rehab system for the poor. Prior to joining The Center for Investigative Reporting in 2005, Evans was a reporter at The Sacramento Bee.