E-commerce giant Amazon has been fined nearly $6 million for violating labour laws in the state of California in the US.
The California Department of Industrial Relations said in a statement that the e-commerce major didn't provide employees written notice of quotas they have to follow — a requirement of the Warehouse Quotas law.
“The employer argued they did not need a quota system because they use a peer-to-peer evaluation system,” according to the statement.
The law requires warehouse employers to provide employees the number of tasks they need to perform per hour and any discipline that could come from not meeting the quota.
“The peer-to-peer system that Amazon was using in these two warehouses is exactly the kind of system that the Warehouse Quotas law was put in place to prevent,” said Labour Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower.
“Undisclosed quotas expose workers to increased pressure to work faster and can lead to higher injury rates and other violations by forcing workers to skip breaks,” Garcia-Brower added.
The Labour Commissioner's Office began its initial inspection on September 22, 2022.
The investigation found there were 59,017 violations for the Moreno Valley and Redlands warehouses from October 20, 2023 to March 9, 2024.
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