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California’s labor regulator on Tuesday speak it is punished Amazon nearly $6 million for violating a state law intended to limit the use of nuisance warehouse capacity quotas.
The California Office of the Labor Commissioner said it investigated two Amazon facilities in Moreno Valley and Redlands, both located east of Los Angeles, and found 59,017 violations of the Quota law, officials said. state warehouse. Productivity quotas have become a cause of concern for Amazon workers.
The Warehouse Quota Law takes effect from 2022 and require Employers must disclose productivity quotas to employees and government agencies, as well as any discipline workers may face if those quotas are not met. The law also prohibits employers from requiring warehouse workers to meet unsafe quotas that prevent them from taking state-mandated meal and rest breaks or using the bathroom.
The Labor Commissioner’s Office said Tuesday that Amazon “did not provide written notice of the quota.” The company argued that it did not need a quota because it used a “peer review system,” officials said.
“The peer-to-peer system Amazon is using in these two warehouses is exactly the type of system the Warehouse Quota law was designed to prevent,” Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower said in a statement.
Amazon in recent years has faced scrutiny over how it treats its warehouse and delivery workers. Managers and critics have particularly focused on the pace of work, argumentative that speed requirements put workers at greater risk of injury.
Washington’s safety regulators in 2022 fined Amazon for “intentionally” violating workplace safety laws by requiring employees to work at such a fast pace that it puts them at high risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders or problems such as sprains and strains. Usually due to repetitive tasks.
Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration also cited Amazon multiple times for safety violations. Amazon said it will appeal all citations.
States included New YorkWashington and Minnesota have passed similar regulations, and a federal bill has been filed introduced last month by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.
Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the US, has previously said it does not use fixed quotas. Instead, the company said, it bases “performance expectations” on a variety of metrics, such as how certain teams at a location are performing. There are also controversial allegations that employees do not get enough breaks.
Amazon has also defended its safety record. The company said in March that injury rates had improved, and it went public Investment plan more than $750 million in safety initiatives this year.
Maureen Lynch Vogel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company disagrees with the allegations and has filed an appeal.
“The truth is we do not have a fixed quota,” she wrote in an email. “At Amazon, individual performance is evaluated over an extended period of time, relative to the performance of the entire on-site team. Employees can – and are encouraged – to review their own performance. whenever they want. They can always talk to a manager if they’re having trouble finding information.”
CLOCK: Amazon’s worker safety hazards have been criticized by regulators and the DOJ
