Amazon.com has been fined $5.9 million by a California labor regulator for allegedly neglecting to provide workers at two warehouses, one of which has workers trying to form a union.
A California labor regulator has penalized Amazon.com (AMZN.O.) $5.9 million for allegedly failing to properly notify employees of productivity goals at two warehouses, one of which includes workers attempting to organize a union. The charges were disclosed on Tuesday by the office of California Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower. The fines were assessed in May. A California rule enacted in 2022 mandates that companies give workers written explanations of quotas if they are to face penalties for not finishing tasks within the allotted time. The commissioner claimed that during a five-month period that concluded in March, Amazon broke the law at its sizable warehouses in Redlands and Moreno Valley, which are located west of Los Angeles, around 60,000 times.
According to Amazon spokeswoman Maureen Lynch Vogel, the corporation is contesting the citations and disputes the idea that warehouse employees are subject to set quotas. “At Amazon, each employee’s performance is assessed over an extended period of time, taking into account the overall success of the site team. Workers are welcome to examine their performance at any time, according to Lynch Vogel’s statement. The main focus of a national movement to unionize Amazon’s warehouses has been criticisms about the company’s purported quota system. In 2022, employees at a warehouse in New York City cast ballots to form a union; however, since then, workers at two other locations in Alabama and New York have rejected unionization.
A union filed a petition in 2022 to have an election at the ONT8 warehouse in Moreno Valley. However, the petition was eventually withdrawn due to accusations that Amazon had engaged in unlawful union-busting. August is set aside for a hearing before an administrative judge about those allegations, which Amazon has refuted. Amazon’s quota system is precisely what the California law was intended to stop, according to a statement from Garcia-Brower.
Unreported quotas put employees under more pressure to work more quickly, which can raise the risk of accidents and other infractions by compelling employees to miss breaks, the speaker stated. A Democratic-backed bill in Congress would essentially codify the California legislation, mandating written notice of quotas and outlawing quotas that ban employees from taking restroom breaks. One of the bill’s authors, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, stated that the penalties imposed on Amazon on Tuesday demonstrated the urgency of ending “punishing” quota schemes.
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