Amazon, one of the biggest employers in New Jersey, has long faced scrutiny for its workplace safety record. (Edwin J. Torres Governor’s Office)
A workers’ rights group is suing a federal agency to obtain records on the deaths of three Amazon workers who died within three weeks of each other in New Jersey warehouses in 2022.
WarehouseLife filed the complaint in federal court Tuesday asking a judge to force the U.S. Department of Labor to fulfill records requests and provide Occupational Health and Safety Administration reports into what the group calls Amazon’s “notoriously hazardous warehouses.”
“We have questions about Amazon’s working conditions and conduct that we hope to be able to answer through gaining access to these investigations,” the lawsuit states.
Plaintiff Daniel Schlademan, a WarehouseLife organizer, filed a Freedom Of Information Act request for the documents on Aug. 14. He asked for inspector notes, recordings or photos, interviews with workers, and other summarized reports on the deaths at the warehouses.
Schlademan hasn’t received a response, according to the complaint. The federal public records law requires agencies to communicate requestors within 20 business days, though they can extend that deadline.
All three deaths happened in 2022. On July 13, Rafael Reynaldo Mota Frias died at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Carteret on one of the company’s biggest sale days of the year. Rodger Boland died July 24 after falling from a three-foot ladder and hitting his head in the Robbinsville warehouse. Eric Vadinsky died on Aug. 4 at a delivery facility in Monroe.
OSHA investigated the spate of deaths and found no wrongdoing from Amazon. The federal agency said none of the deaths were heat-related and attributed Mota Frias’ death to a medical condition.
But according to the complaint, Mota Frias’s co-workers said he was pleading for fans to be placed in his working area hours before he died, and they believe his death was related to working conditions and extreme heat. Doctors also noted Boland’s body temperature was extremely high when he fell, the complaint states.
“These were tragic incidents and it’s really disappointing that some people are working to twist them into something they weren’t. As is standard in these situations, OSHA conducted thorough investigations and closed all three without citations or allegations of wrongdoing on Amazon’s part, and there’s no evidence that heat was a contributing factor in any of them,” said Maureen Lynch Vogel, Amazon spokesperson.
Labor groups in New Jersey are pushing for lawmakers to pass a bill to implement heat-related protections for workers, like requiring access to cool water and limiting how long people can work in the heat.
“Information on these deaths will help inform whether state action, like a state-wide employer heat standard, is needed to provide New Jersey workers with more heat-related protections,” the WarehouseLife lawsuit says.
Amazon has long faced scrutiny for its workplace safety record. The company is among the largest employers in the state, and is quickly growing its footprint in the Garden State.
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