Amazon has been hit with a $5.9 million fine by a California labor regulator for not properly informing workers about productivity quotas at two of its warehouses.
The fines, issued by California Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower's office in May, were announced Tuesday, Reuters reported.
Under a 2022 California law, employers are required to provide written descriptions of productivity quotas to workers, particularly if they face disciplinary action for not meeting these quotas.
The labor commissioner's office found that Amazon violated this law 59,017 times over a five-month period ending in March at its Moreno Valley and Redlands warehouses near Los Angeles.
Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel denied that warehouse workers are subjected to fixed quotas and stated that the company is appealing the citations.
"At Amazon, individual performance is evaluated over a long period of time, in relation to how the entire site's team is performing. Employees can – and are encouraged to – review their performance whenever they wish," Vogel said in a statement.
The issue of Amazon's quota system has been central to efforts to unionize its warehouses nationwide.
Workers at a New York City warehouse voted to join a union in 2022, while unionization attempts at other facilities in New York and Alabama were unsuccessful.
In 2022, a union petitioned to hold an election at the Moreno Valley warehouse, known as ONT8, but later withdrew the request amid allegations of illegal union-busting activities by Amazon. An administrative judge is set to hear these claims, which Amazon denies, in August.
Commissioner Garcia-Brower said that Amazon's quota system is precisely what the California law aims to prevent.
"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," she said.
Congress is currently considering a Democratic-backed bill that would mandate written notice of productivity quotas and prohibit quotas that prevent workers from taking breaks or using bathrooms, similar to the California law.
Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, one of the bill's sponsors, said that the fines against Amazon show the need for federal legislation to address "punishing" quota systems.
"We need more than a patchwork of state laws," Markey said in a statement.
