Amazon France Logistics Fined €32 Million by CNIL for Intrusive Worker Surveillance

France’s data privacy watchdog, the CNIL, has imposed a hefty fine of €32 million ($35 million) on Amazon France Logistique for what it terms an “overly intrusive” surveillance system. The focus of this penalty is Amazon's use of warehouse barcode scanners and its practices in gathering data via these connected devices.

The controversy centers around the tracking of workers' scanner activity, particularly the recording of "idle time" (periods of scanner inactivity of ten minutes or more) and "latency under ten minutes" (scanner interruptions between one and ten minutes). The CNIL has declared these practices illegal under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), arguing that they impose excessive monitoring and potentially require employees to justify every work interruption, even short breaks.

Moreover, Amazon's "stow machine gun" indicator, which alerts if an item is scanned less than 1.25 seconds after a previous item, ostensibly to prevent double-scanning errors, also falls under GDPR scrutiny. The CNIL asserts that this level of monitoring is excessively intrusive, requiring employees to constantly justify their actions.

The French regulator criticizes Amazon's use of this performance data for assessing warehouse workers' overall performance on a weekly basis. Additionally, the CNIL deemed it excessive to retain all data collected by the system, including resultant statistical indicators, for all employees and temporary workers for a period of 31 days.

In response, Amazon strongly disagreed with the CNIL’s conclusions, considering them factually incorrect, and hinted at a possible appeal. The company argues that such connected warehouse management systems are common in the logistics industry, aiding in workload balancing across teams and warehouses, especially during order peaks. Amazon emphasized that the "stow machine gun" indicator was intended to ensure product quality checks, and they have decided to disable this feature. Furthermore, Amazon plans to adjust the "idle time" metric by extending the threshold limit to trigger the indicator from 10 to 30 minutes.

This case, primarily a data processing issue rather than a labor dispute, highlights the growing concerns over workplace surveillance and the balance between operational efficiency and employee privacy rights. As digital monitoring tools become more prevalent in workplaces, regulatory bodies like the CNIL are increasingly vigilant in ensuring that such practices comply with legal standards, particularly regarding data protection and employee rights.