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The California Department of Labor Relations announced Tuesday that it has fined e-commerce giant Amazon more than $5.9 million for violating labor laws that require companies to inform warehouse workers of the quotas they must follow.
These quotas must be provided to workers in writing, according to the state’s warehouse quota law, which went into effect in January 2022. Quotas could include things like the number of tasks employees are expected to perform per hour and the consequences they could face if they fail to meet expectations.
The fines are concentrated at Amazon’s fulfillment centers in Moreno Valley and Redlands, where the state labor commission said it found 59,017 violations between Oct. 20, 2023 and March 9, 2024. press release.
“The peer-to-peer system Amazon used in these two warehouses is exactly the kind of system the warehouse quota law was designed to prevent,” California Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia Brower said in a statement. “When quotas are not publicly disclosed, workers are pressured to work faster and are forced to take breaks, which can lead to higher injury rates and other violations.”
Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel told Business Insider that the company disagreed with the allegations and was appealing the fine, adding that Amazon does not have fixed quotas.
“Individual performance is assessed over time and in relation to the performance of teams across sites. Employees can and are encouraged to review their own performance at any time,” she said. “If they’re struggling to find the information they can always speak to their manager.”
Lynch Vogel also Amazon Blog Post It describes how to manage employee performance in fulfillment centers, including communicating job expectations and using robots to improve worker safety.
Amazon operates a vast network of fulfillment centers where employees pick and pack orders before shipping them to customers. Spanning over 1 million square feet The company employs more than 1,000 people. It has come under the spotlight of regulators for allegations of low wages and stressful working conditions, and workers at its fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize in 2022.