Two Amazon warehouses in California held quotas to evaluate worker performance without telling the employees being evaluated in writing, California state labor regulators announced Tuesday. Amazon was fined $5.9 million in May for the violations as a result. The tech and e-commerce giant has a current market cap of roughly $1.9 trillion.
Amazon violated the state's Warehouse Quotas law nearly 60,000 times between September 2022 and March this year, the regulators allege in their announcement. The law was first approved in 2021 and took effect in 2022.
"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," California Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower said. "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."
Amazon reportedly told the state regulators that its "peer-to-peer evaluation system" is not the same as a quota system. But the state considers a work quota to be any type of evaluation that requires work to be done at a specific speed. The law also regulates any quotas around rest breaks and bathroom use.
Amazon tells PCMag it's fighting the decision. “We disagree with the allegations made in the citations and have appealed," spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel, head of Amazon's global safety PR and media relations, said in a statement via email.
"The truth is, we don’t have fixed quotas. 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. They can always talk to a manager if they’re having trouble finding the information,” Vogel added.
Amazon warehouse workers are injured more often than others in their sector, CBSNews reported last year. Amazon worker injuries increased 20% from 2020 to 2021, and a 2023 survey found that nearly half of Amazon warehouse workers have suffered from injuries and burnout on the job. Amazon uses an electronic system to track its warehouse employees' movements and efficiency. More recently, it's tried displaying "AmaZen" messages telling workers to "close your eyes and think about something that makes you happy."
Amazon has also been repeatedly accused of alleged union-busting and hindering union organizing. A National Labor Relations Board judge ruled last year that Amazon broke the law when it retaliated against union-organizing employees.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include comment from Amazon.