Amazon broke the law by failing to tell workers they were subject to quotas on tasks performed in its warehouses, incurring fines of nearly $6 million from the state of California.

"Undisclosed quotas expose workers to increased pressure to work faster  and can lead to higher injury rates and other violations by forcing workers to  skip breaks,” said Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower in a June 18 statement announcing the fines of  $5,901,700 against Amazon.

Citing more than 59,000 separate violations of the state's Warehouse Quotas law, Garcia-Brower said Amazon failed to disclose quotas to workers at two warehouses near Los Angeles. Passed in 2021, the law requires companies to inform employees of productivity quotas that might apply to them, and bans any work requirements that would interfere with mandated breaks, bathroom use, or the following of health and safety laws. 

Amazon failed to provide written notice of quotas, arguing they did not need a quota system because they use a peer-to-peer evaluation system.

“The peer-to-peer system that Amazon was using in these two warehouses is exactly the kind of system that the Warehouse Quotas law was put in place to prevent," Garcia-Brower said in a written release. "Undisclosed quotas expose workers to increased pressure to work faster and can lead to higher injury rates and other violations by forcing workers to skip breaks.” 

The state also partnered with the Warehouse Worker Advocacy Group (WWAG) — a labor advocacy organization based out of Southern California — on its investigation. In a statement from the WWAG, a worker at one of the facilities described an instance where she was written up for not scanning enough items, having missed the quota by one point despite not knowing what the target rate actually was.

A spokesperson for the company told The New York Times that Amazon plans to appeal the ruling, and that "individual performance is evaluated over a long period of time, in relation to how the entire site's team is performing." 

Meanwhile, more than 3,000 Amazon warehouse workers in the United Kingdom say that they have started voting on union recognition, Reuters reports. If the vote is successful, the company would be forced to negotiate with the group on pay and working conditions. The voting period kicked off on June 20 and runs through July 8, with results expected to be announced sometime after July 15.