Amazon has been fined approximately $6 million for violating U.S. labor laws

New York, June 19: E-commerce giant Amazon has been fined almost $6 million for violating labor laws in the US state of California.

The California Department of Industrial Relations said in a statement that the e-commerce director failed to provide workers with written notice of the limits they must adhere to – a requirement of the Inventory Limits Act.

“The employer argued that it did not need a quota system because it used a peer-to-peer evaluation system,” the statement read.

The law requires warehouse employers to provide employees with the number of tasks they must complete in an hour and to address any discipline that may result from failure to meet that limit.

“The peer-to-peer system that Amazon used in these two warehouses is exactly the type of system that the Warehouse Cap Act was intended to prevent,” Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower said.

“Undisclosed amounts put workers under increased pressure to work faster and could lead to more accidents and other violations by forcing workers to skip breaks,” Garcia-Brower added.

The Office of the Labor Commissioner began its initial review on September 22, 2022.

The investigation found that from October 20, 2023, to March 9, 2024, there were 59,017 violations at the Moreno Valley and Redlands warehouses.