Amazon hired a caregiver who’d never had a traditional job. Two years later, she oversees its warehouse robots

As reported by Business Insider, Amazon has been significantly ramping up its use of robots across its warehouses. The technology has taken over difficult tasks that were previously done by humans.

But the company says its goal is to augment workers and help them do more with less effort, not to replace them. An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that one of its warehouses now employs more than 3,000 people, compared to around 1,000 when it first opened in 2023.

Amazon has also faced controversy over its working conditions, though.

Amazon warehouses have been ‘uniquely dangerous’

One of the Amazon employees that Business Insider spoke to, Briana Brager, started as a picker. She had previously been a caretaker for her family.

Amazon warehouses hold a huge variety of products, and pickers are the ones who find the items you’ve ordered and make sure they end up in the right place.

Brager moved into a new position, one that involves monitoring robots and ensuring that issues that arise are solved quickly and safely.

Her new job required weeks of training and job shadowing, but she told Business Insider that it’s less demanding than being a picker.

In December 2024, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) published a report detailing some of the ways Amazon has created what it described as “uniquely dangerous” conditions in its warehouses.

An Amazon employee characterized the HELP report as several years out of date and raised concerns about its methodology and relevance to current conditions.

However, the report found that pickers were required to select items and place them in the correct bins up to 450 times an hour. That’s 7.5 items a minute, or roughly one every eight seconds.

Workers loading small packages using Amazon’s SmartPac system had even more to do. The report found that they completed 600 tasks per hour, or 5,400 tasks per shift.

“Facilities with advanced robotics require 30% more employees in reliability, maintenance, and engineering roles,” Amazon said in a statement to Moneywise. “Safety is central to how we invest in robotics.

“As we’ve deployed more robots, they’ve supported a more than 40% decrease in our global recordable injury rate over the past six years.”

Amazon’s ‘repeatedly rejected or ignored’ ideas to reduce harm

Offloading repetitive, strenuous tasks such as picking items to robots could help create a more sustainable work environment. And if workers can transition into jobs that involve monitoring robots, that could be a positive development.

But the HELP report found that Amazon has consistently prioritized speed over safety.

Repetitive tasks can lead to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). While some workers like Brager are able to perform jobs that are less likely to lead to MSDs, Amazon still employs a large number of pickers.

The exact number is unclear, as Amazon does not release official statistics on the size of its operations. But the company’s approach to packaging and shipping goods has resulted in injuries for workers.

A safety worker who spoke to HELP said that he had “many injuries where repetitive motions and the rate required to work were directly correlated.”

HELP found that Amazon has performed multiple internal studies showing that increased speed results in greater risk for employees. The committee also found that the company could reduce injuries by reducing workers’ speed.