Midland Pallet Trucks is urging caution when it comes to Amazon Prime Day sales, saying that the practice is contributing to a rise in health and safety complaints among warehousing staff.

Amazon’s most recent Prime Day – back in July – caused a surge of health and safety grievances among the firm’s UK workers, with complaints rising by 209-percent, as revealed by a recent study from organise.org.

At the same time, strikes broke out across Amazon’s European warehouses, with workers complaining of unsafe working conditions and overdemanding expectations.

Midland Pallet Trucks, which provides manual warehousing equipment such as Hand Pallet Trucks and High Lift Pallet Trucks to firms across the UK, has sounded alarm over the demands placed on staff and the unsafe working conditions arising from attempting to satisfy so much demand. Worker complaints over the day and a half of Prime Day included issues such as a lack of drinking water, limited or no bathroom breaks, sprains, backaches and stomach cramps due to overexertion. Many workers complained of unrealistic targets set by management, forcing staff to knowingly break health and safety guidance to satisfy demand. One employee even said that it’s a common practice for workers to stop drinking water in order to avoid having to take bathroom breaks.

Amazon UK workers revealed that the only way to meet even seventy five-percent of their workload was to run across the warehouse and throw caution to the wind.

Phil Chesworth, Managing Director of Midland Pallet Trucks, said, “This insight into Prime Day is very worrying for anyone who works in or around the warehousing and logistics sectors. What we’re hearing about are violations of health and safety guidelines in order to meet demand.

“We work hand-in-hand with warehousing clients across a number of sites, so we know that accidents can happen even under the most careful and monitored conditions. When workers have to abandon all good health and safety practice in a drive for results, there’s only one, very negative outcome. We know that Prime Day is a huge logistical undertaking, but it’s not important enough to put outcomes over employee safety. We’re very interested to see how things change in the future.”

To find out more, visit https://www.midlandpallettrucks.com/