Amazon knew of the link between increased worker injuries and the company’s production quotas, but its executives allegedly rejected safety recommendations to loosen its mandates, an investigation by lawmakers found.

The findings are based on Internal Amazon documents compiled by the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions, which is chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. 

“The shockingly dangerous working conditions at Amazon’s warehouses revealed in this 160-page report are beyond acceptable,” Sanders said in a statement. “Amazon’s executives repeatedly chose to put profits ahead of the health and safety of its workers by ignoring recommendations that would substantially reduce injuries.”

Amazon disputes the findings and accused Sanders of misrepresenting the company’s safety record. 

The “report is wrong on the facts and weaves together out-of-date-documents and unverifiable anecdotes to create a preconceived narrative,” a company spokesperson said.

According to the Senate panel, Amazon in 2021 began studying the impact of repetitive motions on warehouse workers, including how many products they could pick from robotic shelving units. The internal research found that employees who were trying to keep pace with company production quotas usually exceeded the limit beyond which injury rates increased, the report found. 

That same study also advised using software to monitor the rate at which workers were picking products and to institute additional breaks to ensure employees were not overdoing the repeated motions. But that recommendation and others aimed at improving workplace safety at Amazon were rejected by senior executives concerned about the “customer experience,” the Senate committee said.

A separate investigation by CBS News found that Amazon trucking contractors have higher rates of safety violations. Questions about the e-commerce company’s practices for moving packages between facilities surfaced after the January death of a 19-year-old Texas college student who was killed in a crash with an Amazon contract driver. 

A CBS News analysis of federal safety data found that Amazon contractors in the company’s delivery network had monthly violation rates — such as speeding and texting while driving — that were usually double those of carriers who didn’t transport for Amazon. 

In the past two years, at least 57 people have died in more than four dozen crashes involving federally regulated carriers shipping for Amazon, according to data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), though the data does not indicate who was at fault in these incidents. 

Amazon disputes those findings. Tim Goodman, Amazon’s global legal director for road safety, told CBS News that although the company requires background checks for contracted drivers who deliver directly to customers’ homes, said Amazon relies on the FMCSA to oversee so-called middle-mile contractors who move freight between facilities in larger vehicles.

Francis Ford Coppola, the visionary director behind “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now,” was named a 2024 Kennedy Center honoree earlier this year, celebrating his lifetime of artistic achievements. Over a career spanning more than half a century, the 85-year-old filmmaker has earned five Oscars, six Golden Globes, two Palme d’Or awards and a BAFTA.

When asked if there is a signature “Coppola style,” the director said, “I think I was always someone even as a 17-year-old, 18-year-old film director who wanted to poeticize the work I did, but then take it to the very brink where if I took it any further, it would fall off the cliff.”

The daring creative philosophy has shaped some of the most influential films in history, including “The Conversation” and “The Godfather” trilogy.

Coppola’s journey began in Detroit, where he was born into an Italian-American family. Raised in Queens, New York, he was heavily influenced by his parents, especially his father Carmine, a flutist for Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra. That is where he learned that music and pictures are not always connected. 

While in college, Coppola was deeply inspired by Sergei Eisenstein’s silent film “October: 10 Days That Shook the World.”

“It was a silent picture, but they weren’t playing any accompaniment,” he said. “And I was amazed at how the film itself sort of made you think you were hearing it because of the way it was cut. I came out of that experience absolutely bowled over.”

Coppola followed his passion for film to UCLA. “I had no money. I had no car. I had no girlfriend. I had nothing,” he said.

After graduating, Warner Brothers hired him to direct “Finian’s Rainbow,” and in 1970, his screenplay for “Patton” earned him his first Academy Award.

At just 29, Coppola signed on to co-write and direct “The Godfather,” a film that became a cornerstone of modern cinema. “I really was an Italian-American. So although I didn’t know gangsters, I knew that to the detail of what life was like in that kind of household,” he said.

Casting Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone proved challenging. “I was ordered by the head of the studio that I couldn’t even mention Brando,” Coppola said. Eventually, the studio agreed — on three conditions. “He has to do the movie for nothing, no fee; he has to shoot a screen test; he has to put up a million-dollar bond. So, I said, ‘I accept.'”

Brando’s transformation into the character astonished the studio. The studio dropped all conditions after seeing Brando’s screen test, and the rest is history.

“The Godfather” earned Coppola an Oscar nomination for Best Director and a win for Best Adapted Screenplay. He continued his streak with adaptations like “The Outsiders.”

Coppola went on to adapt S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish,” which featured his nephew, Nicolas Cage. 

Cage is just one of many members of the Coppola family who have pursued successful careers in the arts. Reflecting on his priorities, Coppola said, “I want my children to be healthy, and I want them to be happy in their work, which they seem to be. I’m now more concerned that there’s going to be an Earth here that’s going to sustain itself.”

Now, as a Kennedy Center honoree, Coppola reflected on how he views himself, saying, “I think of someone who loved his human family — not just my immediate family, but the entire human family. That’s who I am. I am the one who loves everybody.”

The Kennedy Center Honors ceremony, which took place on Dec. 8, 2024, will be broadcast on CBS on Dec. 22.