FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 5, 2024
CONTACT
Carter Dougherty
carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org
BlackRock & Vanguard Enable Dangerous Amazon Warehouse Working Conditions
Behemoth Asset Managers Oppose Audit of Amazon Labor Situation
Washington, D.C. – BlackRock and Vanguard, the world’s two largest asset managers, voted against a shareholder proposal requesting an independent audit of Amazon’s notoriously dangerous warehouse working conditions for the third year in a row, according to recently-disclosed proxy voting data. BlackRock and Vanguard are the largest Amazon shareholders besides its founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos.
Investigations related to Amazon’s dangerous warehouse working conditions and its attempts to obfuscate them have been initiated by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Department of Justice, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions Committee, and state regulators. As detailed in the shareholder proposal, Amazon was responsible for 53% of all serious injuries in the U.S. warehouse industry in 2022 despite employing only 36% of the workforce. This striking figure, alongside other reports of Amazon’s high injury rates and unsafe working conditions, underscores a crisis that many Amazon shareholders are concerned with yet asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard continue to ignore.
“BlackRock and Vanguard’s votes against the Amazon warehouse worker safety proposal are a glaring reminder of how these behemoth asset managers consistently reinforce management’s short-term greed instead of prioritizing the long-term financial security of workers whose retirement funds they manage,” said Natalia Renta, senior policy counsel for corporate governance and power at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “Amazon’s labor practices are already coming back to bite the company, but BlackRock and Vanguard are putting their heads in the sand and enabling management to downplay rampantly unsafe workplaces, which can only hurt their own clients.”
This vote reflects a troubling pattern of powerful asset managers using their immense power over public companies to stand in the way of shareholder efforts to force corporate boards and executives to address very real financial risks.
“As these misguided votes come to light, it’s crucial for policymakers and asset manager clients alike to push for changes that would safeguard the savings of the millions of workers whose money BlackRock and Vanguard manage,” said Meron Lemmi, policy coordinator for corporate governance and power at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “By enabling egregiously unsafe Amazon warehouse working conditions, asset managers are, quite simply, failing to do their job.”
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