World of HR: France fines Amazon subsidiary €32 million for worker surveillance practices

Do you ever feel like you’re being watched?

For some Amazon warehouse workers in France, they were. The online retail giant was electronically tracking employees' work, and now it might have to pay a hefty fine.

The Commission Nationale Informatique and Libertés (CNIL), the French agency that enforces data privacy laws in the country, fined Amazon subsidiary Amazon France Logistique €32 million (the equivalent of just under $35 million) for violating employee privacy, TechCrunch reported.

Employees at Amazon’s French warehouses use a barcode scanner to prepare customer orders and track incoming items. Amazon used the scanner data to track employee inactivity of more than 10 minutes, scanning errors (such as double-scanning items), and 1 to 10 minute breaks, the BBC reported.

“The CNIL ruled that…measuring interruptions so precisely and leading to the employee potentially having to justify each break or interruption was illegal,” CNIL wrote in its findings.

Amazon disagreed with the findings, calling the report “factually incorrect” and saying many other companies in France collect similar data.
“The use of warehouse management systems is standard industry practice: They are necessary to guarantee the safety, quality, and efficiency of operations, and to ensure that inventory is tracked and packages are processed on time and in line with customer expectations,” Amazon said in a published statement.