An Amazon warehouse employee says an internal AI assistant and hard-to-reach HR delayed medical accommodations after a February concussion, leaving her disciplined for errors.
In February, Amazon warehouse worker April Watson suffered a concussion while stowing products at a facility outside Atlanta, Georgia. Her neurologist prescribed restricted duty and slower pacing and supplied medical paperwork, but Watson says it took more than a month to secure the accommodations because she could not obtain the correct form from Amazon’s internal AI assistant and had difficulty reaching HR.
During that delay she was flagged for errors, received a “documented coaching,” and was later reprimanded for working slowly — a sequence she and advocates say illustrates how automated systems can hinder timely care for injured employees. This case highlights risks for injured and hourly front‑line staff who may face delayed support and inconsistent discipline when HR processes are automated.
United for Respect surveyed retail and warehouse staff at Amazon and Walmart in December, collecting responses from more than 200 workers. Sixty percent said they feared AI would eliminate their jobs within a year or two, 49% listed losing a job to a robot among their top three worries, and 62% said their primary concern about workplace AI was that HR decisions were being outsourced to automated systems. The results indicate widespread anxiety about both job security and the fairness of algorithm‑driven personnel decisions.
Workers and advocates say automation has steadily changed how employees interact with HR over the last four years. Bianca Agustin, co‑executive director of United for Respect, said the survey results “speak to the nature of how technology is getting implemented in the retail setting, and specifically how Amazon and Walmart are deploying AI in their workplaces,” linking individual cases like Watson’s to broader implementation trends.
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