French data privacy regulator CNIL fined Amazon's logistics subsidiary in France 32 million euros, equivalent to $35 million at today's exchange rates. CNIL said that the "monitoring system" implemented by Amazon Logistics France was "overly intrusive".
The CNIL is particularly concerned about warehouse barcode scanners and Amazon’s data collection practices related to connected devices. When processing an order, Amazon's pickers grab an item, scan it with an attached scanner, and put it into a crate for shipment to the customer. Likewise, employees use scanners to store new items in warehouses.
"The CNIL ruled that Amazon, which had set up metrics to track the idle time of employee scanners, was unlawful to set up a system that measured work interruptions so precisely, as this would have required employees to provide a so-called justification for each break or interruption," the French regulator wrote.
The CNIL considers that both "idle time" (meaning scanner downtime of ten minutes or more) and "delay of less than ten minutes" (tracking scanner outage between one and ten minutes) are unlawful in terms of data processing. CNIL used GDPR as the legal basis for this case.
Amazon also uses a "stowmachinegun" indicator to prevent mistakes. If an item is scanned less than 1.25 seconds after the previous item was scanned, it will signal an error. This sounds like a way to prevent duplicate scan errors. But according to CNIL, this is also a GDPR issue.
It is worth pointing out again that the CNIL lists a number of data processing misconducts. This is not a labor case, but a data processing case of illegal and excessive surveillance of warehouse workers. "The treatment of these two indicators means that employees may be required to justify interrupting the scanner at any time, even for a short period of time. During implementation, this treatment was deemed to be unduly intrusive," the agency wrote.
Amazon uses the performance data every week to assess the overall performance of its warehouse workers, according to French regulators.
"More generally, CNIL considers that 31 days is too long to keep all data collected by the system and the statistical indicators resulting from it, which concerns all employees and temporary workers," the French regulator wrote.
The company issued a lengthy statement following the CNIL fine. "We strongly disagree with CNIL's conclusions, which are inconsistent with the facts, and we may appeal this decision," Amazon wrote.
The company's first argument is that Amazon isn't the only company in the logistics industry using connected warehouse management systems. The company specifically notes that this helps with load balancing across multiple warehouses and multiple teams.
Amazon wrote: "If we face a spike in orders, our systems will help us adjust workloads across our teams so that we can continue to process orders in a safe and efficient manner. The indicator is set up to allow workers to inspect products before they are stored to ensure they are not damaged. The company will disable the indicator in the system."
As for the "idle time" metric, Amazon will extend the threshold limit. From now on, the company will trigger this indicator after 30 minutes instead of 10 minutes.