Legislation Comes After Years of Teamsters’ Advocacy to Combat Dangerous Warehouse Quotas

(WASHINGTON) – The Teamsters commend Representatives Haley Stevens (D-MI), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Chris Smith (R-NJ), and Mike Lawler (R-NY) for introducing the Warehouse Worker Protection Act in the U.S. House of Representatives, which would hold corporations like Amazon accountable for its dangerous safety practices and abusive production quotas.

The bipartisan introduction in the House of Representatives comes four weeks after the companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Senators Ed Markey (D-MA), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Bob Casey (D-PA).

“By forcing workers to comply with arbitrary and unrealistic production quotas, warehouse workers—specifically at Amazon—have experienced sky-high injury rates and have been forced to work dangerous jobs with low wages to further pad corporate profits,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. “Thankfully, protecting workers from being squeezed by greedy corporations like Amazon is a bipartisan issue, and the Teamsters Union is grateful to Representatives Stevens, Norcross, Smith, and Lawler for introducing this urgently needed piece of legislation. It’s time to pass the Warehouse Worker Protection Act and put workers’ safety first.”

The introduction of the federal legislation follows years of action by the Teamsters to advance the Warehouse Worker Protection Act in state legislatures. It is now law in California, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota, and has been introduced in more than a dozen other states.

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.3 million hardworking people in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. Visit Teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and “like” us on Facebook at Facebook.com/teamsters.

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