On January 23rd, French data protection agency CNIL imposed a fine of 32 million euros (approximately 250 million RMB) on Amazon France for illegally tracking employees' "idle time" with barcode scanners and establishing an illegal monitoring system based on this.
Amazon responded that the company does not agree with CNIL's fine and reserves the right to appeal.
According to CNIL's survey, every warehouse worker on Amazon is equipped with a barcode scanner, which clearly records the time when workers take out and package items from the shelves, and analyzes the efficiency and output of workers based on this. For example, if a worker scans an item in less than 1.25 seconds, the scanner will prompt an error; If the scanner is inactive for more than 10 minutes, or if there is no activity for 1 to 10 minutes, the scanner will emit two different interrupt signals, and employees may need to explain why they have "free time".
CNIL believes that this system for monitoring employee performance is overly invasive, causing employees to endure continuous pressure, which is excessive and illegal.
The specific reasons for violations come from three aspects: firstly, it can be understood that the company needs to measure the work efficiency of employees, but it is not necessary to obtain such detailed performance indicators; Secondly, the scanner records employee data in real-time, which will be saved for up to a month; Thirdly, many Amazon French employees are temporary workers, and Amazon did not fully explain its confidentiality and privacy policies before collecting personal data of temporary workers. Therefore, CNIL believes that Amazon did not adhere to the principle of data minimization and did not ensure that data was processed legally, violating the EU's General Data Protection Regulations.
In response to the investigation results, Amazon immediately responded with a lengthy article: Warehouse management systems are industry practices that can "make employees' daily lives easier", and "without the use of scanners, it is impossible to achieve such efficiency because we need to move tens of thousands of parcels while ensuring certain quality standards." Therefore, Amazon strongly disagrees with CNIL's fine, believing it to be inconsistent with the facts.
This is not the first time Amazon has faced data monitoring and labor exploitation issues. Similar incidents have been reported in Amazon warehouse monitoring in both the UK and the US. Amazon's European policy officer revealed in 2022 that if a worker is marked with three "efficiency marks," they may be fired. Subsequently, the UK Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee conducted an investigation, which raised public concerns about the use of monitoring technology to set performance targets and over monitor performance.
Regulatory fines against Amazon are also pouring in. In January 2023, the US Department of Labor accused Amazon of unsafe working conditions in three warehouses and issued a fine of nearly $60000; In June, the US Department of Labor once again accused Amazon warehouses of severely exceeding the production allocated to workers and imposed a maximum fine; Previously, Amazon was fined 746 million euros for illegally authorizing user information for advertising tracking.
It is worth mentioning that the fine issued by CNIL this time is equivalent to 3% of Amazon France's annual revenue in 2021, and the degree of punishment is quite strong. Perhaps facing the pressure of fines, Amazon has also taken a certain step back, promising to disable the 1.25 second scanning error prompt and increase the trigger threshold for "idle time" from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. CNIL stated that the investigation will continue.