The National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties of France (CNIL, the body that monitors the use of personal data) has imposed a fine of 32 million on Amazon's subsidiary in the country for the “excessive” system with which it monitors the activity of its employees in the warehouses. As announced by the French regulator this Tuesday on its website, the sanction was agreed on December 27 after carrying out several inspections.
The CNIL points out that the origin of its investigations began with some press articles that described “certain practices implemented by the company in its warehouses” and, also, after receiving “several complaints from workers.” Throughout its “control missions”, the supervisory body was able to verify how the system works by which Amazon France Logistique (the logistics subsidiary of the American multinational) provides each of its employees with a scanner that monitors numerous actions.
Through this scanner, the company is able to record in real time the execution of some tasks such as the storage of an item and its packaging. But these data are also preserved and linked to the profile of each employee, which “allows the calculation of series of indicators that report on the quality, productivity and periods of inactivity of each employee individually.” And that is what motivated Amazon to be fined: “The CNIL considered that the system for monitoring workers' activity and performance was excessive,” the organization justifies.
The decision is basically explained by three reasons. The first is that the French supervisor considers it “illegal” to implement a system “measuring activity interruptions so precisely and forcing the worker to potentially have to justify each pause or interruption.”
The second issue that concerned the CNIL was the measurement of the speed of use of the scanner during storage work. As the statement explains, “based on the principle that items scanned too quickly increased the risk of error, an indicator measured whether an object had been scanned less than 1.25 seconds after the previous one.” And the regulator's verdict is that this procedure is “excessive.”
That same conclusion (which is “excessive”) is the one reached when analyzing Amazon's decision in France to “keep all the data collected by the device, as well as the statistical indicators that emerge from it, for all employees and contractors.” temporary, keeping them for 31 days.”
The CNIL also points out that it is aware that there are conditions on Amazon's activity that “may justify the scanning device for the management of its activity.” But it reaffirms its conclusion that “the conservation of all these data and statistical indicators is globally disproportionate” and that the system “kept employees under close surveillance in all the tasks they carried out with the scanners and imposed upon them a continuous pressure.” Hence the fine of 32 million euros, which took into account both the number of employees (“several thousand”) subject to the controversial system and the “competitive advantage” that Amazon obtained from it over other companies, which resulted in “economic gains.”
Amazon France Logistique is 100% owned by the American multinational through another company, Amazon EU, based in Luxembourg. The French subsidiary of the online commerce giant had a turnover of 1,135 million euros in 2021, a year in which it obtained a profit close to 59 million, according to the figures that the CNIL includes in the case dossier.
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