One year ago, Oxfam published At Work and Under Watch — a detailed report exposing how surveillance technologies in warehouses are not protecting workers, but harming them. Based on in-depth qualitative and quantitative research, we exposed how Amazon and Walmart, the largest private employers in the US, are profiting off the backs of warehouse workers, while claiming their systems are designed for "safety”.

Instead, we found constant monitoring has created environments where workers are pressured to keep up with inhuman, unsustainable production standards. The results? These warehouse floors have become incubators of injury, sustained by automation, surveillance, and workplace cultures of intimidation.

Over the past year, we didn’t just point to abstract risks or theoretical harms. We shared, in detail, how workers themselves are experiencing these systems — both in numbers and in their own words.

Our research showed that 72% of Amazon warehouse workers and 67% of Walmart warehouse workers said that “how fast [they] work” is tracked closely by company technology always or most of the time. And three out of four workers at both companies reported feeling pressured to work faster — pressure that leads to injury, stress, and burnout.

But the numbers only tell part of the story.

We also shared powerful, painful testimony from workers themselves — people who live the consequences of this model every day. One former Amazon worker told us:

"I left Amazon because my body couldn’t handle it anymore. If you don’t move the box, the next person will. They’re ready to jump onto the next person. When someone gets that thought into your head that you’re so easily replaceable, you’re more willing to ignore your injuries. One of my biggest concerns was what was I going to injure today."

Another worker compared the warehouse conditions to slavery:

"They care more about quotas and meeting production rates than actually caring about us as human beings inside there. I feel more like a number."

These are not isolated experiences. They reflect systemic problems — and they demand systemic change.

In addition to sharing these powerful — and deeply troubling — statistics and worker testimonies, we met with both companies repeatedly to express our concerns and call for concrete new commitments.

We visited Amazon’s warehouses.

We submitted a shareholder resolution ringing alarm bells for Walmart’s investors.

We even filed a complaint with the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights.

And we’re not the only ones who have pushed the companies to improve — and been met with silence. This year alone, Amazon faced at least 10 shareholder resolutions calling for change. Instead of engaging with investors, the very stakeholders that Amazon should seemingly have the greatest financial interest in engaging, it chose to challenge 8 of them.

Amazon also faced legal action from various actors — here are just three examples among many: An employee sued Amazon over a severe workplace injury, leading to a $16.2 million judgment in his favor. And Amazon was sued for unpaid overtime in a class action filed by warehouse workers. And California has fined Amazon a total of $5.9 million, alleging the e-commerce giant worked warehouse employees so hard that it put their safety at risk.

And yet—nothing.
No public commitment. No meaningful steps forward. Just silence. But we remain steadfast in our fight for Amazon and Walmart workers’ rights, and fortunately we’re not alone. Last Monday, Oxfam joined SOC’s letter calling on Amazon shareholders to vote against the company’s proposed Executive Compensation, as the “astonishing degree of misalignment” between high executive compensation and the “steady deterioration of Amazon’s investment performance” - which includes stated capital investments in combating the “mounting evidence of significant safety issues faced by warehouse workers” - reflects the company’s prioritization of payoffs for upper management, rather than long-term investments benefiting small shareholders or employees. The company’s leadership has so clearly failed its workers time and again.

And most recently, even in this challenging political climate, the SEC ruled against Walmart’s attempt to “no action” or dismiss our shareholder resolution that calls for improved corporate governance over fundamental worker health and safety concerns, meaning our resolution will proceed to a vote.

Our demands remain clear:

• Commit to cease or significantly reform the use of electronic surveillance to enforce unreasonable and/or unsafe productivity demands (including but not limited to the use of so-called “Time Off Task” procedures).
• Commit to conduct a human rights impact assessment of working conditions inside U.S. warehouses that includes a gender and racial justice lens for all issues uncovered.
• Commit to publicly disclose the rate of worker injury claims and improve on-site medical care.
• Commit to maintain a neutral stance on union activity by workers and respect their right to freedom of association.

So, we ask again: What will it take for these companies to act? How many more injuries? How many more reports, meetings, lawsuits, and resolutions?

Will the companies hide behind the chaos of the current political climate and realize new levels of impunity for mistreatment of their workers or will they honor their responsibility to respect their workers human rights and address the worker health and safety crisis their surveillance technology has created?

Warehouse workers deserve better — not tomorrow, not someday, but now.