California Labor Commissioner Cites Amazon $6M for Violating Warehouse Quotas Law

Amazon failed to meet requirements of California’s Warehouse Quotas law at warehouses in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, according to the Labor Commissioner’s Office.

The ofice cited Amazon.com Services LLC $5,901,700 for violations of the Warehouse Quotas law in two of the company’s distribution warehouses in Moreno Valley and Redlands.

The law, enacted in 2021 as Assembly Bill 701, requires warehouse employers to provide employees written notice of any quotas they must follow, including 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,” Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower said in a statement. “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 failed to provide written notice of quotas. The employer argued they did not need a quota system because they use a peer-to-peer evaluation system. The law defines a quota as work that must be performed at a specified speed or worker suffer discipline, and it places limits on quotas that prevent compliance with meal or rest periods, use of bathroom facilities, or compliance with occupational health and safety laws.

The office began an initial inspection in 2022, reportedly finding 59,017 violations for the Moreno Valley and Redlands warehouses from October 20, 2023 to March 9, 2024. Penalties were issued under Labor Code 2699(f), which provides penalties of $100 for each violation.

The Warehouse Worker Resource Center assisted the investigation. WWRC is a nonprofit focused on trying to improve working conditions in the warehouse industry in Southern California.

Topics California