Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. secured a win in Washington state after an industrial appeals judge vacated four workplace safety citations issued to the company between 2020 and 2021 over ergonomic hazards.
In a decision announced Monday, Judge Stephen Pfeifer, of the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, ruled in Amazon’s favor in four consolidated appeals involving citations that had been issued by the Washington Department of Labor and Industries over claims that the company exposed workers to ergonomic hazards that led to a high rate of musculoskeletal disorders.
Judge Pfeifer said Washington’s Industrial Safety and Health Act doesn’t have specific standards governing ergonomic hazards, and that the Department of Labor and Industries can cite a company under the general duty clause, but a higher burden of proof is placed on regulators.
The judge called the department’s evidence of ergonomic hazards “unpersuasive.”
“The Department’s experts failed to establish medical causation between specific jobs in the cited process paths and employees’ musculoskeletal disorders,” the judge wrote. “The Department failed to prove the elements required to establish a general duty violation as it relates to alleged ergonomic hazards.”
An Amazon spokeswoman, in an emailed statement, said “the judge’s decision reinforces what we’ve said all along: there’s nothing more important than our employees’ health and safety.”
In separate news, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said this month that Amazon has only paid just over $100,000 out of close to $330,000 penalties it was assessed between 2017 and 2023.