Amazon warehouse staff in India are still being forced to work in temperatures as high as 55C and the majority feel conditions are too hot to be safe, according to a new survey.
The survey was released on Monday by UNI Global Union, nearly one year after the company came under fire over accounts of workers fainting and falling sick in stifling conditions.
It covers 474 warehouse and delivery workers across India this summer. Of those surveyed, 75 per cent said they or a coworker required medical attention and 58 per cent described their workplaces as “extremely hot and unsafe” or feeling “like an oven.” Nearly 68 per cent said they had felt sick, dizzy, or faint at work and 85 per cent witnessed a coworker fall ill from heat exposure.
Amazon has strongly rejected the findings of the survey, saying it is proud to provide employment for around 120,000 people in India and that it has measures in place to ensure their safety in the workplace.
Union officials and workers, on the other hand, argued that the survey findings matched their daily experiences. Asked about the hottest temperatures they had to endure inside an Amazon India warehouse, workers in the report gave figures ranging from 42C to as high as 55C. Nearly half of the workers said they were not told the actual temperature inside their facilities.
Forty one per cent said they couldn’t slow their pace without risking penalties and 59 per cent described their targets as unachievable in high heat. More than half said they were punished or warned for slowing down during heatwaves, with consequences ranging from wage loss (36 per cent) and disciplinary action (38 per cent) to loss of bonuses (15 per cent) and even team penalties (11 per cent).
Only 7 per cent reported being granted extra breaks during heatwaves while 16 per cent said they were offered no cooling measures at all and 51 per cent said that they were denied healthcare after disclosing symptoms.
Amazon said the survey was “not an accurate representation of the experience of hundreds of thousands of people working across our operations network in India”.
“By contrast, our latest internal surveys, conducted anonymously, show that 9 out of 10 associates rate Amazon favourably on job satisfaction,” a spokesperson told The Independent.
The “facilities are air-conditioned, provide safe working conditions, and include infrastructure specifically designed to support associate health and comfort,” the spokesperson said. “We recently announced an investment of Rs20bn (£167m) to further elevate associate experience.”
This new investment, Amazon India claimed, entailed installing new cooling systems, putting in place enhanced safety measures, and expanding Project Ashray, a network of rest stops for delivery drivers offering air-conditioned seating, water, toilets, first aid, and refreshments.
Sixty five such facilities are currently operational and more than 100 are planned by the end of 2025, the company said.
The Independent spoke to a number of workers at Amazon’s Manesar warehouse in the northern state of Haryana, who said that while the conditions offered by the company look good on paper, in practice workers still face daily struggles.
One 24-year-old who has been employed on-and-off with Amazon India since 2020 in Manesar, told The Independent unloading trucks in the fulfilment centre dock often became unbearable.
“Yes, I agree there is a fan in the area. But the trucks are between 32 and 34 feet and there is no fan inside,” he said. “If you go and tell our seniors that we are feeling hot, they say, ‘Do the work or else go home.’”
The pressure extended beyond the heat, he complained. “We’re expected to unload the vehicle within 1-1.5 hours. The vehicle is huge – it’s not possible to unload everything within that time with just three people. Because of the extreme heat, many refuse to go inside the truck. This often leads to fights among us.”
He said he complained several times to managers about the situation, after which he was issued with a warning letter.
A second worker, 23, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, described the pressure of hitting a target of attaching 650 labels an hour in the warehouse. “One time, I returned from the bathroom and my manager asked where I had been. When I told him, he said, ‘You get paid to work, the company does not pay for you to go to the bathroom or drink water.’”
He said the pressure to meet such targets made the work more dangerous. “There are boxes of mattresses, polythene, and tape that we have to cut open with knives,” he explained. “Because of the speed we are forced to work at, people rush. When people are moving quickly with knives, there’s always a chance of injury. From what I see, safety is not being given the importance it deserves.”
Both men said that fainting was a regular occurrence in the summer. “Some of my female friends fainted. I witnessed this many times,” said the first worker.
Medical support, they said, was limited to the on-site clinic handing out painkillers. “Every time we go and say we are sick or feeling ill, they give us a paracetamol tablet and tell us to rest a bit and go back to work,” he said.
“We don’t even entertain the concept of taking breaks or resting. On paper, we are allowed a lot of things, but the repercussions are so harsh that we don’t even think about it.”
For many of the surveyed workers, speaking up carried its own risks: 42 per cent said they feared reprisals for raising safety concerns.
Just 27 per cent of workers said they felt safe raising issues while 47 per cent said Amazon didn’t take heat safety seriously.
Workers said any improvements on the ground had been modest. “There have only been a few changes since last year’s heatwave and the media attention, and even those were made due to pressure from the union,” the 23-year-old worker told The Independent.
“They’ve installed a few fans and coolers but everything else is pretty much the same. The targets remain the same. As for the salary, they only increased it by Rs700 (£5.8). So, earlier I was getting paid Rs10,088 (£84) and now I get Rs10,788 (£90) per month.”
His colleague put it bluntly: “Multiple people I’ve worked with over the years stayed here for two or three months and then left. They said the heat is too much, the work pressure is so high, it does not look doable to us.”
The choice to endure or leave Amazon is shaped as much by the heat inside warehouses as by the scarcity of work outside. According to the government’s latest Periodic Labour Force Survey, unemployment rose to 5.6 per cent in June 2025, up from 5.1 per cent the previous month, The New Indian Express reported.
Independent estimates are worse: the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy puts June’s unemployment figure at 7 per cent.
Even with the fear of retaliation, low wages and harsh conditions, workers accept the risks: informal work remains widespread in India and formal contracts offering steady monthly income and social security are hard to find outside large platforms.
Amazon maintains that its fulfilment centres are equipped with air-conditioned break rooms with ample seating, where staff are entitled to two scheduled 30-minute breaks per shift and can also take informal pauses when needed. The company also claims that trained nursing staff provide first-aid cover at all large sites and that regular safety drills and evacuation protocols are carried out at all their fulfilment centres.
They insist that the survey’s allegations are not representative of the company’s facilities, highlighting its policy of providing breaks, cold water, electrolytes and climate-control systems. It says managers are trained to encourage staff to use their full break times and that their “break adherence report demonstrates 96% of associates take adequate breaks”.
“The survey in question appears to have been deliberately framed to advance a pre-set narrative by those who wish to tarnish Amazon’s reputation in India,” an Amazon India spokesperson said, adding that “we cannot confirm the authenticity of the survey or the 474 respondents that are quoted in the survey”.
The tension between worker accounts and corporate assurances is not new. Last summer, during one of India’s hottest seasons ever, media outlets, including The Independent, documented workers collapsing, vomiting and being pressured to work through the heat.
In June 2024, the National Human Rights Commission took notice of reports saying that warehouse workers at the Manesar facility had been forbidden bathroom or water breaks while working under extreme heat.
Amazon later admitted “safety lapses” in that warehouse but described them as “unfortunate and isolated” and initiated disciplinary proceedings against those implicated in the incident.
Globally, the American company has faced comparable allegations. Last year, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration reached a settlement with Amazon for failing to adequately protect warehouse staff at 10 facilities across the country. In the UK, the GMB union has campaigned for years over what it calls “inhuman” targets and unsafe conditions, leading to strikes at Amazon’s Coventry site in 2023 and 2024.
In November last year, Amazon India workers joined the global “Make Amazon Pay” protests alongside the company’s staff in the US, Germany and France, demanding higher wages, adequate rest breaks, and union rights.
Despite the scrutiny, Amazon’s business in India has continued to grow. According to the Economic Times, the company’s marketplace arm Amazon Seller Services had an operating revenue of Rs254bn (£2.1bn) in the 2024 financial year, up 14 per cent from the previous year, while logistics arm Amazon Transportation Services reported revenues of Rs48.89bn (£407m).
“The 2024 heatwave was a warning and one year later our survey shows little has changed,” UNI Global Union general secretary Christy Hoffman said. “No worker should be forced to risk their health or their life for Amazon’s bottom line. Heat protections must be enforceable, and workers themselves must have a say in setting the standards.”
For the workers, the promises remain hard to reconcile with lived reality. “In my opinion, they do not take safety seriously. The way they push us to meet targets, it’s impossible to maintain proper safety,” said one of the workers.
