Amazon, Wash. Press Their Cases to Win Workplace Safety Lawsuit

Amazon and the Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) exchanged dueling reply briefs Friday in Amazon’s constitutional challenge of the state’s workplace safety compliance rules (see 2211210088).

The state’s workplace safety rules violate the 14th Amendment’s due process clause by forcing employers like Amazon to spend tens of millions of dollars in “abatement costs” before “giving them a meaningful opportunity to challenge the government’s claims,” said Amazon’s reply in support of its motion for summary judgment. Amazon’s “derelictions” show the company’s “callous approach to safety when it parrots an interest in safety but begrudges spending money to protect workers,” countered the L&I’s reply in support of its motion to dismiss.

L&I wrongly argues that the automatic denial of an employer’s stay request on punitive damages, when that employer provides late employee notice of a workplace hazard, poses no risk of “an erroneous property deprivation,” said Amazon. But when the state denies a stay for that reason, “it gives no consideration to the complexity of the underlying citation, the merits of the stay request, or the costs of implementing unnecessary abatement measures required by the citation,” it said.

The state’s policy of refusing to consider the merits of stay requests “thus increases the risk in those cases that employers will suffer erroneous property deprivations in the form of unnecessary abatement orders,” said Amazon. The “supposed safeguards” to protect employers are “inadequate,” said Amazon. Though L&I contends that state policies create no risk to employers because companies can seek equitable tolling, move for reconsideration, or seek a writ of certiorari, “none of the cited procedures provides constitutionally adequate protections against an erroneous property deprivation,” it said.

L&I’s brief argued Amazon provided no evidence that being required to abate hazards “caused it any such hardship.” Amazon is a “nearly trillion-dollar company,” so it isn’t “plausible” that Amazon “would face economic hardship to meet abatement requirements,” said the state. “Amazon admits to spending over $300 million on safety aid and $15 billion in COVID worker-safety measures to change the workplace -- absorbing costs and operational effects.”

Amazon “raises debunked claims about its costs,” said L&I. Its assertions about the precise costs for abating aren't relevant for the motion to dismiss, it said: “There is no dispute that Amazon has neither pled nor presented any hardship from the costs and operational effects of abatement.”