A union has argued that the number of ambulances being called to Amazon warehouses every year is evidence of poor working conditions.
What it means: How do you measure safety and wellbeing at work? There are lots of ways: you could look at wages, rest times, holiday and benefit plans, worker satisfaction surveys.
GMB, the union, has come up with its own measure, and Amazon's not happy with it. 600 ambulances were called to Amazon's warehouses in the last three years, compared to 8 times to a nearby Tesco warehouse with a similar number of employees.
To GMB, that's evidence of dangerous and unhealthy working conditions at Amazon – they say they're treating their staff like 'robots'.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon thinks this is unfair – they say ambulances are being called for personal health reasons, rather than work related accidents. But a survey of GMB members working at this warehouse said 4 out of 5 suffered pain from their workload, with one pregnant woman told to stand for 10 hours straight.
