Workers Pass Out at Tennessee Amazon Warehouses

Amazon Worker Correspondent

A worker at the Amazon Fulfillment Center MQY1 in Mount Juliet, TN passed out and was left in a wheelchair on April 28. The temperature inside MQY1 was 81 degrees, and the air conditioning did not cover all the work stations. Another MQY1 worker mentioned someone else had also “passed out last month”.

Later that same day, another co-worker at the nearby BNA7 Sortation Center passed out. One BNA7 worker pointed out that it “feels hot in the breakroom and bathrooms”.

Amazon has not made any official statements about these incidents.

Both incidents occurred just three weeks after the death of another worker at PDX9 in Oregon, where a 46-year-old worker collapsed on the job and hit his head on the concrete floor and began to bleed out. Management at that warehouse told workers to “just turn around and not look” at the dead worker and to keep working.

Workplace deaths and heat exhaustion are not new at Amazon warehouses. In 2021, after a Ship Dock worker at the BHM1 Fulfillment Center in Bessemer, Alabama asked HR if he could go home because he wasn’t feeling well, HR responded, “You’re just gonna have to speak to management and see what they think. Go back to your station and figure things out.” When the worker asked his manager, he said “You just don’t have enough UPT [Unpaid Time Off]”. The worker continued working and later died from a stroke inside one of the trailers. In another case, a worker was taken to the hospital and died 6 hours later. In response, BHM1 Management told workers not to talk about these deaths.

Summer hasn’t started yet, and the rising temperature will lead to more workplace safety incidents if things aren’t changed. From April 30th to May 1st, MQY1 workers received a Compliance Safety Training about heat illness at their work stations. However, no official statement about the air conditioning has been sent out. Many logistics workers in warehouses like MQY1 are overworked without effective A/C while Amazon also makes it difficult to process doctors’ notes, forcing workers to keep working through illness and injury. Robots are used to increase the amount of packages that get shipped out, leading to higher production goals and company profits at the expense of workplace safety and worker’s rights.

There are no official updates about the well-being of the workers who fainted in MQY1 and BNA7. Amazon continues to act like nothing happened.

Image: An Amazon fulfillment center in Troutdale, OR. Credit: Tedder on Wikimedia Commons.

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