Bentley & More LLP takes on the cyber giant Amazon in workers’ compensation claims

Bentley & More LLP takes on the cyber giant Amazon in workers’ compensation claims

‘TIS THE SEASON

By Partners Keith More & Jose Gonzalez

 

The Holiday Season is just about to ramp up this week with post-turkey shopping on Black Friday.  For the brick and mortar shoppers it’s the unofficial start of the Holiday Season, Christmas trees and decorations await along with blowout sale prices on TV sets larger than their budgets would otherwise allow. Analysts say that this holiday shopping season is expected to be as robust as ever with the average person spending $1,047.83, up 4% from last year’s average even though the season was shortened by 6 days due to Thanksgiving being a week later in November.

The real shopping damage will be done on December 2– Cyber Monday.  Hundreds of millions of Americans will at some point turn on their computer screens to take advantage of enormous online sales.  In 2018, the one-day sales topped $7.9 billion.  This year is expected to be even larger with online giant Amazon having a substantial stake.

The Cyber Monday shopping orders will be filled for the next three and a half weeks until Christmas by hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers throughout the country and in Southern California through mammoth fulfillment centers in the Inland Empire located in Moreno Valley, San Bernardino, and Redlands.  The work shift for most of the Amazon workers at the fulfillment centers are going to become 10-hour shifts with many overtime hours.  Workers will be enduring increase repetition in their job duties of handling millions of items ranging from cosmetics to car engine parts.

Amazon sells everything and the workers will deal with the pain of it all.  This work is grueling, repetitive, and wears on the workers’ necks, shoulders, arms, backs and knees.  Every item that Amazon sells is handled by workers from the moment that the bulk items are received from the various vendors in the warehouse and are unboxed, scanned and boxed again for storage to being unboxed, scanned and shipped out to the online shopper in the fulfillment centers.

Bentley & More LLP workers compensation lawyers continue to see an increase in the filing of Amazon work comp claims and has taken on the cyber giant. As the popularity of Cyber Monday increases each year unfortunately,  the price is paid for by the Amazon workers.