Local operators of Amazon’s French warehouses must pay €32 million ($35 million) after regulators discovered the company tracks employee movement down to the second.
On Tuesday, the French Data Protection Authority, the CNIL, ruled that Amazon’s system of using scanner data to track employee movement is “excessive.”
“Such systems kept employees under close surveillance for all tasks carried out with scanners and thus put them under continuous pressure,” the agency said.
According to the CNIL, Amazon’s French scanners record if workers have scanned an item less than 1.25 seconds after scanning the last item. If workers scan faster or slower, they could be cited. According to the ruling, French Amazon workers were judged to be “idle” if their scanner was inactive for more than 10 minutes.
The company also held data about employee scanning behavior for up to 30 days, which the CNIL deemed excessive and in violation of France’s data protection laws.
Amazon says that many of its scanner surveillance practices are in place to ensure that the business runs smoothly and that its employees remain safe. However, despite its disagreements with the authority’s ruling, the company did raise the threshold for workers to be considered idle from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. The company also said it had decided to stop the collection of data after the investigation’s findings were announced.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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