French regulators fined Amazon $35 million on Tuesday, determining the e-commerce giant had an “unduly intrusive system” for monitoring warehouse employees.
French Data Protection Authority (CNIL)has announced that its domestic subsidiary, Amazon France Logistics, will use barcode scanners to track the progress of tasks such as stocking products on shelves and packaging them for shipment. He accused the company of requiring employees to do so.
Regulators announced that Amazon France Logistique set up three productivity tracking alerts that were found to be illegal. One that sends an error message if an employee scans an item “too fast,” one that tracks his “idle time” of more than 10 minutes, and one that sends an error message saying “1 Tracked “scanner interruption periods from 10 minutes to 10 minutes”.
“Metrics have been introduced to track employee scanner inactivity time,” the agency said in a statement. “The CNIL has ruled that it is unlawful to set up a system that measures work interruptions so accurately, potentially requiring employees to justify every break or interruption.”
CNIL also accused Amazon of storing “excessive” performance data about its employees' daily demands.
The company was found to have committed multiple violations of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The agency said it had investigated Amazon's practices in France following a series of “press articles” and complaints from Amazon warehouse workers.
“In such systems, employees were under close surveillance for all tasks performed using scanners and were therefore under constant pressure,” the agency added.
Amazon disputed the authorities' findings in a statement.
“We strongly disagree with the CNIL's factually incorrect conclusions and reserve the right to appeal,” Amazon said in a statement.
“Warehouse management systems are industry standards and are necessary to ensure operational safety, quality and efficiency, and to track inventory storage and package processing on time and in line with customer expectations,” the statement added. Ta.
Intense scrutiny in France is a new headache for Amazon, which faces allegations in the United States that strict productivity targets leave workers with no choice but to urinate in bottles.
The company denies wrongdoing.
