Why Amazon Was Hit with a GDPR Fine of €32 Million by the French Data Authority, CNIL
Why Amazon Was Hit with a GDPR Fine of €32 Million by the French Data Authority, CNIL
Amazon's heavily criticized surveillance of stock workers is not allowed under the strict data privacy laws of the European Union. + My appereance on the STAY Sustainable Blog.
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Why Amazon Was Hit with a GDPR Fine of €32 Million by the French Data Authority, CNIL
Introduction
Edward Snowden's early characterization of GDPR as a “paper tiger” no longer holds water. Throughout the last two to three years, we have seen that GDPR is not just a bureaucratic nightmare that places a burdening compliance workload on small to medium-sized companies. The world’s most comprehensive privacy framework has real teeth and claws and can regulate the behaviour of BigTech companies where it makes a difference.
Last year, Meta was hit with a record fine of €1.2 billion for failing to comply with data transfer laws between the EU and the US. That added another one to Meta’s existing pile of sky-high fines issued for failing to comply with general data processing principles. On this specific ground, Meta was issued a fine of €405 million in 2022, another one of €390 million in 2023, and a fourth one for insufficient measures to ensure information security of €265 million in 2023, all of these issued by the Irish data authorities.
Other fines have been issued against Amazon Europe for €746 million by the Luxemburg data authorities in 2021, TikTok Limited for €345 million by the Irish data authorities in 2023, and WhatsApp for €225 million by the Irish data authorities in 2021. In France, Google was issued three fines of respectively €90 million, €60 million, and €50 million in 2021 due to insufficient legal basis for data processing (see a full list of GDPR fines at www.enforcementtracker.com).
On January 23, 2024, The French data watchdog CNIL (The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) issued a fine of €32 million to Amazon France Logistique (Amazon). The sanction size is not record-breaking but it sets an important precedent for what practices a mighty company like Amazon is allowed and not allowed to expose workers to in the EU. Once again, GDPR shows its claws.
(The full judgement “Délibération de la formation restreinte n°SAN-2023-021 du 27 décembre 2023 concernant la société AMAZON FRANCE LOGISTIQUE” in French here. )
Amazon’s Fulfillment Centers
At the heart of Amazon's operation are the Amazon fulfillment centers. These are warehouses located around the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Europe, and home to stock workers who prepare, pack, and ship millions of packages to Amazon customers each day.
Amazon deploys the cutting edge of robotics to support its stock workers. Lately, it has been testing a humanoid robot called Digit that was designed by Agility Robotics. The purpose of Digit is officially to ease the workload of human stock workers in Amazon Fulfillment Centers as it carries out repetitive tasks. Yet, understandably, Amazon’s heavy deployment of increasingly advanced robots, has sparked displacement fears among its +1 million global warehouse-working staff.
Amazon is a world leader in robotics but also a Western leader in treating warehouse workers like robots.
Emily Guendelsberger took a job at an Amazon fulfillment center in Indiana for a few weeks and wrote about her experience for Time. After two weeks, her body became used to the physical strain of walking 15 miles a day and doing hundreds of squats during long shifts from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. The worst part of the job was the mental stress of being held to the productivity standards of robots. As she says:
“Unless you’ve worked a low-wage service job over the past decade or so, it’s hard to understand how stressful widespread monitoring technology in the workplace has made life for the bottom half of the labor market.”
In Amazon fulfillment centers, workers are extensively tracked and monitored. If they fail to meet their productivity targets or have too many inactive minutes during working shifts so-called “productivity firings” are common. A document leaked to The Verge in 2019, indicates that Amazon was firing more than 10 percent of its staff annually, solely for productivity reasons. Warnings and terminations regarding quality or productivity were often times carried out automatically without intervention from a human supervisor. To reach the productivity targets, peeing in bottles was normal (The Intercept).
According to a 32-year-old former Amazon stock worker who was forced to retire due to a back injury " the military was hard, but it was nothing compared to Amazon” (Business Insider). To keep up with the high working pace of robots, employees at the fulfillment centers suffered an injury rate in 2021 double the industry standard in the US (Business Insider).
In response to the criticism of working conditions in Amazon fulfillment centers, Amazon has declared that it would invest $550 million in safety measures in 2023. From 2019 to 2022, the recorded incident rate at their facilities has reportedly improved by 24%, while the number of injuries resulting in employees needing to take time off work has been reduced by 53%. Amazon has also implemented a health program called WorkingWell with guided meditations and mindfulness and stretching exercises for workers (The Verge). Yet, despite these admirable efforts, one can wonder if the measures really addresses the root problem.
CNIL’s decision on Amazon’s extensive tracking and monitoring of warehouse workers in the fulfillment centers is to my knowledge the first legal consequence the company has faced for its strict surveillance of workers-policy.
Below, we will take a closer look at the facts, the legal framework behind CNIL’s decision, and the reasoning behind issuing the €32 million fine to Amazon for failing to comply with GDPR. Importantly, we will also learn how exactly Amazon monitors workers and why this practice is illegitimate.
Amazon Productivity Measures
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