• California’s labor regulator slapped Amazon with a roughly $6 million fine for breaking the state’s Warehouse Quotas law.
  • Officials investigated two Amazon warehouses in Southern California and found they “failed to provide written notice of quotas.”

OUR TAKE
The incident highlights the ongoing pressures on global online retail giants on labor rights and environmental protection at work. This fine is not just an isolated incident, but a microcosm of how global businesses can find a balance between local laws and global standards in the digital age.
–Revel Cheng, BTW reporter

California’s labor regulator on Tuesday said it fined Amazon nearly $6 million for violating a state law aimed at curtailing the use of onerous warehouse productivity quotas.

What happened

The California Labor Commissioner’s Office said it investigated two Amazon facilities in Moreno Valley and Redlands, both located east of Los Angeles, and found 59,017 violations of the state’s Warehouse Quotas law, officials said. Productivity quotas have become a common source of consternation among Amazon workers.

The Warehouse Quotas law went into effect in 2022 and requires employers to disclose productivity quotas to employees and government agencies, as well as any discipline workers may face for not meeting them. The law also prohibits employers from requiring warehouse employees to meet unsafe quotas preventing them from taking state-mandated meal and rest breaks or using the bathroom.

Washington safety regulators in 2022 fined Amazon for “willfully” violating workplace safety laws by requiring employees to work at such a fast pace that it put them at higher risk of musculoskeletal disorders or problems such as sprains and strains often caused by repetitive tasks.

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Why it’s important

Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the U.S., has previously said it doesn’t use fixed quotas. Rather, the company said, it relies on “performance expectations” that factor in multiple indicators, such as how certain teams at a site are performing. It’s also disputed allegations that employees don’t get enough breaks.

Amazon “failed to provide written notice of quotas,” the Labor Commissioner’s office said Tuesday. The company argued it doesn’t need quotas because it uses a “peer-to-peer evaluation system,” officials said.

“The peer-to-peer system that Amazon was using in these two warehouses is exactly the kind of system that the Warehouse Quotas law was put in place to prevent,” Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower said in a statement.

Amazon’s fine may prompt other global companies to re-examine their labor management practices to ensure compliance with local laws and global standards, and demonstrate the challenges and opportunities of balancing compliance and business interests in the digital economy.