It’s Amazon (AMZN) Prime Day! The time to go look for bargains on all those little things you need around the house—or maybe just always wanted—is back in play and putting up quite a lot in potential buys. However, those low prices have a dark side, as a government panel—the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee—found that Prime Day is a seriously huge cause of company injuries at the e-commerce giant.
In fact, Prime Day 2019 featured a total injury rate of right around 45 injuries per 100 workers. You read that right: it’s almost half.
The report went on to note that warehouses have been typically “understaffed” during Amazon’s two biggest rush seasons: Prime Day and the holidays. This, in turn, left Amazon workers forced to take on increased workloads at the busiest times of the year. And for a company famous—or perhaps infamous—for “unconventional” bathroom breaks (workers using bottles and bags to relieve themselves to meet demand), that’s not a good look.
Amazon Cries Foul
Meanwhile, Amazon wasn’t taking this lying down. Word from representative Kelly Nantel was that the report was shockingly one-sided and that it ignored the progress Amazon has made so far. Nantel noted that “…it misrepresents documents that are several years old and contained factual errors and faulty analysis.” Questionable, but potentially valid.
Meanwhile, Amazon has been actively working to augment its staffing with robots for years. A report from late 2023 had Amazon trying “humanoid robots” to supplement—if not supplant—its staff. A report from 2022, meanwhile, suggested that Amazon could actually run out of workers to hire by the end of this year.
Is Amazon Stock a Buy or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 44 Buys assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 44.39% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $222.93 per share implies 15.45% upside potential.
