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The California Labor Commission has fined Amazon a total of $5.9 million for violating state law by overworking warehouse workers and endangering their safety.
The two complaints, issued in May, allege that Amazon.com Services LLC violated the state’s warehouse quota law at facilities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the Labor Commissioner’s Office said in a press release Tuesday.
Amazon was fined $1.2 million for a warehouse in Redlands and $4.7 million for another warehouse in Moreno Valley.
According to the Labor Commissioner’s Office, the Warehouse Quota Law, which will come into effect in 2022, will require warehouse employers to inform employees in writing of the quotas they are expected to follow, including the number of tasks they must complete per hour and the disciplinary measures that will be imposed if they fail to meet the requirements.
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Amazon.com Services LLC is accused of violating California’s warehouse quota law at facilities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. (Photo: John Keeble/Getty Images)
Amazon denied the state’s allegations on Tuesday and announced it was appealing the fine.
“In reality, we don’t have fixed quotas,” Amazon spokeswoman Maureen Lynch Vogel said in a statement. Associated Press“At Amazon, an individual’s performance is evaluated over time in relation to the performance of their team across sites. Employees can and are encouraged to review their own performance at any time, and if they’re having trouble finding information, they can always ask their manager for help.”
The complaint accuses Amazon of failing to provide written notice of the quotas.
The Labor Commission Secretariat stated that the law defines a quota as work that must be performed at a certain speed or else disciplinary action may be taken. The law also places restrictions on quotas that prevent workers from respecting meal and rest periods, using toilets, or complying with the Industrial Safety and Health Act, and the Labor Commission Secretariat noted that quotas may be illegal if they are not disclosed to workers or prevent them from exercising these statutory rights.
Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia Brower said Amazon was using “exactly the kind of system this law was created to prevent.”
“The peer-to-peer system Amazon used at these two warehouses is exactly the kind of system the Warehouse Quota Act was created to prevent,” she said in a statement. “When quotas are not publicly disclosed, workers are pressured to work faster and are forced to take longer breaks, which can lead to higher injury rates and other violations.”
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Amazon was fined $1.2 million for a warehouse in Redlands and $4.7 million for another warehouse in Moreno Valley. (Photo by KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images)
The Labor Board launched an investigation in 2022 after employees at two warehouses alleged they faced unfair allocation practices. The Warehouse Workers Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for improved working conditions, assisted in the investigation.
“Amazon’s pursuit of speed is leading to higher injury rates,” Mindy Acevedo, staff attorney at the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, said in a statement. “AB 701 provides important protections against unsafe work speeds and unfair quota practices, but these citations show that Amazon has failed to comply with basic parts of the law.”
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“Brave workers raised the alarm about these violations, and the Labor Commissioner took swift action,” Acevedo continued. “We’ve heard from workers that not only are they being forced to work an unsafe pace, but there is little transparency about work expectations and they could lose their jobs if they don’t meet undisclosed quotas. Amazon workers are entitled to the fairness and transparency, quota expectations, and safe work pace that AB 701 promises.”
The resource center said in a press release that other states, including Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Washington, have similar laws on the books. In May, Sen. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a bill to protect warehouse workers.
