Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab has been fined $5.9 million by a California labor regulator who claims the online retail giant failed to properly tell workers of productivity requirements at two warehouses, one of which some workers are attempting to unionize.
On Tuesday, the office of California Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower disclosed the fines that were imposed in May.
A 2022 California legislation requires companies to disclose written definitions of quotas to employees who can be penalized for failing to finish assignments at a certain speed.
According to the commissioner, Amazon violated the law roughly 60,000 times during a five-month period ending in March at enormous facilities in Moreno Valley and Redlands, outside of Los
Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel said that the corporation is appealing the fines and disputed that warehouse workers had set targets.
Criticisms about Amazon’s claimed quota system have been at the center of a countrywide drive to unionize its warehouse workers. Workers in a New York City warehouse chose to join a union in 2022, while others at two locations in New York and Alabama have subsequently rejected unions.
In 2022, a union submitted a petition to hold an election at the Moreno Valley warehouse, known as ONT8, but it was subsequently withdrawn due to suspicions of unlawful union-busting by Amazon. An administrative court will consider those accusations, which Amazon has disputed, in August.
In a statement, Garcia-Brower stated that Amazon’s quota system is precisely what the California law was intended to prevent.
Congress is contemplating a Democratic-backed plan that would virtually duplicate California’s law, mandating written notice of quotas and forbidding restrictions that prevent employees from taking breaks or using restrooms.
Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, one of the bill’s supporters, said the fines imposed on Amazon on Tuesday showed the need to tighten down on “punishing” quotas.
