France on Tuesday fined Amazon $35 million for illegally surveilling its workers. Warehouse workers are seen at an Amazon facility in Hawthorne, Calif., on Dec. 15, 2020. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo
France’s Commission Nationale Informatique & Libertes on Tuesday fined Amazon $34.67 million for illegal data tracking of workers by Amazon France Logistique.
The CNIL determined Amazon illegally tracked workers’ inactivity times to such an extent that it required them to account for every minor work interruption. An idle-time indicator and latency under 10 minutes indicator that tracked scanner interruptions of between one and 10 minutes. Advertisement
“The CNIL considered that the system for monitoring employee activity and performance was excessive,” CNIL officials said.
Amazon also tracked the speed by which workers scanned items with a standard of 1.25 seconds differentiating between likely errors and quality work production. Any items scanned less than 1.25 seconds after scanning the prior item indicated a greater potential for worker error, which CNIL officials determined is excessive monitoring of worker activity.
Amazon uses a “stow machine gun” indicator to record a scanning error whenever a worker scans an item less than 1.25 seconds after scanning a prior item. The CNIL said the indicator is excessive and amounts to illegal monitoring of worker activity.
The CNIL also said it’s excessive for Amazon to maintain data collected by its worker monitoring system for 31 days. While it’s understandable Amazon requires a scanner system to measure worker performance, how the current system works is too invasive and puts thousands of workers under continuous pressure by using close surveillance of all tasks done using scanners, CNIL said. Advertisement
“The constraints imposed on employees through this computer monitoring contributed directly to the company’s economic gains and gave it a competitive advantage over other companies in [the] online sales market,” CNIL officials said.
The CNIL specifically cited Amazon for failing to comply with France’s data minimization principle and not ensuring lawful processing. Amazon also failed to provide information and transparency or ensure the security of personal data regarding its use of video surveillance, according to the CNIL.
The CNIL is France’s federal data protection agency and was created in 1978 to enforce the nation’s data protection laws.
In the United States, Amazon last year was fined $46,875 for safety violations in its warehouses located in Aurora, Colo.; Nampa, Idaho; and Castleton, N.Y. Officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the online retailer for exposing workers to ergonomic hazards that could lead to repetitive motion injuries and musculoskeletal disorders.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in June announced a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions investigation into the company’s “abysmal safety record in Amazon’s warehouses and the company’s treatment of workers injured in those warehouses.”
