Retail has had labor quotas (with serious health/mental consequences) since time immemorial, but i don't see any outrage against Sears, ToysRus, or BedBath.
"Warehouse Quota Law, which went into effect in 2022 and limits quotas for 'work that must be performed at a specified speed or the worker suffers discipline,' "
So it's not just that Amazon was cracking the whip really hard, Amazon was particularly astray of a particular (and somewhat new) law.
Probably because it's the largest employer of warehouse workers in the nation and the second largest employer overall? Also, the issue is not having quotas, it's having quotas and keeping them secret from the workers.
Two of those are dead and the third has coded several times over the last ten years. Amazon, on the other hand, is one of the world's biggest businesses.
It’s really, really, really difficult to interpret your comment in good faith, can you expand on your question? Otherwise you just come across as trying to poison sentiment analysis algorithms.
I read your commment and I feel like it is indistinguishable from a talking head on TV using a “whataboutism” to defend the actions of Amazon without seeming to defend the actions of Amazon. Which makes me feel mad if that’s your goal and somewhat curious if you knew that before you posted.
I would like to believe you’re an extremely passionate labor rights advocates and that you can hold all corporations to account. If that’s the case could you keep the original text and add an “Edit: my bad. We shouldn’t downplay their harms, but I’m passionate about this, where are more of these conversations happening?”
The issue here is that Amazon had productivity quotas for its workers that were kept secret from the workers. It's the keeping a secret part that is illegal. On the one hand, this seems reasonable, but the fact that the law only applies to warehouse workers (the "Warehouse Quota Law") and was passed in 2022 makes me suspicious that this isn't a good faith worker protection law but rather specifically targeted at Amazon for political reasons. If this practice is so bad, why is it allowed for all other industries?
> makes me suspicious that this isn't a good faith worker protection law but rather specifically targeted at Amazon
It seems to target Amazon, but for good reasons [1].
The law’s principal mode of enforcement is private [2]. This fine appears to be more the state laying a trail of breadcrumbs for private attorneys to follow than the last word on the matter.
> why is it allowed for all other industries?
Defining what constitutes a quota is hard. If there isn’t evidence of abuse in other settings, it doesn’t make sense to expand the regulatory burden for the hell of it.
Are secret quotas common in other settings? I don't think I've ever been told about one, and I had a whole lot of other jobs before starting this career.
> If this practice is so bad, why is it allowed for all other industries?
Competent lawmakers consider enforceability. Enforcing a law like this requires either the creation and funding of an enforcement agency, or additional funding to an existing agency to enforce it. If your law applies to all industries, that funding is massive and gets struck down--either the law simply isn't passed, or the law is passed but is a totally ineffective political gesture. There are rare exceptions, where there's political will to actually put together that funding (for example: ObamaCare), but then you run into the complexity of how such a law interplays with the various industries and parties impacted, and getting the enforcement of such a law right takes decades of tweaking and handling edge cases, which may never actually work.
Long story short, I'd much rather see small laws that target small, well-understood problems and fix them, than see unenforceable feel-good political gestures or some politician's magnum opus for his legacy that tries to do something too complicated for anyone to understand.
Amazon is the third company in California to be hit with fines under this law, joining Sysco and Dollar General, which were fined $318,000 and $1.3 million in October and November, respectively, according to copies of the citations shared with The Post.
1. Proportionality. Fines should be proportional to the company's size, revenue, and the severity of the violation. The financial impact should be significant enough to grab the company's attention and incentivize change.
2. Escalating penalties. Implement a system of escalating penalties for repeated violations w/increased monitoring.
3. Transparency. Publicly disclose the details of labor violations and the fines imposed.
4. Targeted sanctions. Temporary suspension of licenses, government contracts, at local, state & federal level.
5. Victim comp. Ensure that a portion of fines go towards comping the affected workers.
> Proportionality. Fines should be proportional to the company's size, revenue, and the severity of the violation. The financial impact should be significant enough to grab the company's attention and incentivize change.
This is a fine for a local violation. Trying to make it proportional to the entire company's size (which expands far beyond those locations and even business types) would be insane.
The fines are calculated in proportion to the estimated damage and potential profits.
> Escalating penalties. Implement a system of escalating penalties for repeated violations w/increased monitoring.
Fines for repeat violations would be higher, so no need to be upset.
> Transparency. Publicly disclose the details of labor violations and the fines imposed.
Literally in the article. Did anyone read the article? Why are we upset about things that are already explained in the article?
> Targeted sanctions. Temporary suspension of licenses, government contracts, at local, state & federal level.
You want to suspend the Amazon warehouse's license for their first violation for not properly disclosing quotas in writing?
Do you have any idea what happens when you do this? The people employed there are laid off. They lose their jobs. Why would anyone assume that you can just shut down companies and the only people who suffer are some abstract group of executives somewhere?
One I always advocate for regarding smaller businesses that do this. Legally you must to list your previous business names for 5 years. So "Super happy Mega Global tech - Formerly Bastards Inc." That way you cannot just name change away your reputational problems.
Is this more or less than they made from breaking said law.
I know regulatory capture is a thing but it seems like there should be some minimum “Crimes committed for financial gain that are punished with a fine must have a minimum fine of 100x the amount of money they made from the crime”
The 90’s saw a constant stream of journalists and politicians praising 3 strikes laws. Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?
Is there a term similar to “regulatory capture” but where the government becomes dependent on fines?
I suppose that if workers lost out on benefits of approximately the fine amount, the fine becomes a regressive tax since it goes towards general revenue rather than to whom was harmed.
They’ve been doing this for years. It costs less to pay the fines than the loss in productivity would be, the robots didn’t pan out in the timeframe advertised and driving human labor to subsistence level (“loose labor markets”) is both policy and incidentally the reason why all the polls say “the economy is terrible” and all the pundits say “how do we convince the public that the metrics show they should be happy”.
Maybe I'm not following, but I'm seeing tons of responses saying that a low fine is alright because this is a local violation. What is the reasoning there? Doesn't the profit go to the corporation as a whole?
The penalty must be proportionate to the crime. Otherwise, there's a good chance a higher court will overturn it.
It doesn't matter where the profits go; in this case, management at two warehouses did something wrong, and the fine reflects the scope of the harm done.
If this could be proven to be happening illegally at every warehouse nationwide, then it becomes a larger issue and there will be larger personalities.
Because taxes and fines are two different things. Taxes aren't a punishment for a crime. Fines are proportional to a crime. Two of Amazon's 300+ warehouses were found to be breaking a labor law
Because you create a loophole where non-profitable companies commit the offense and get cash back (if fines were connected to revenue, negative revenue would become a reward)
The company “failed to provide written notice of quotas” to employees, as required. Tape a sheet of paper on the wall with the numbers, done. Meanwhile, the antipathy of jealousy is palpable.
If you taped a paper on the wall to notify employees of each disclosure required, you'd probably run out of viable wall space before you ran out of notices.
How much of that was from Californian warehouses? Because if you don’t do that math, the fine gets overturned by the courts.
That not only reduces the deterrence factor. It delays private enforcement by the harmed employees who would have otherwise relied on the commission’s facts in court without the colour of them being overturned on appeal.
This is fair, but remember the business units are partitioned and extremely hierarchical in a company this size, so someone, somewhere, well below the top, got in trouble for this.
That seems pretty low... is what I said before I saw the metric being mneasured in hours instead of months.
This is tough because we had fine ceilings for a good reason. But maybe we should start considering proportional charges (+ maybe a fine floor) at this rate.
Additionally California PAGA lawsuits are notorious for nearly bankrupting small businesses. This case wasn't PAGA, but still people need to realize that sometimes these things are more nuanced than they appear.
Infractions are 200 dollars per infraction for every employee, and are religiously perused by private law firms.
For example, if a company with 100 employees let employees take lunch whenever they wanted, they would be sued for 20K per day this occurred since employers are required to require employees take lunch within 5 hours of starting the day, meaning they could easily look at millions of dollars of fines for trying to be nice to employees that a private law firm would sue them over.
And in the end the majority of the settlement will go to the law firm and the actual person who sued will get 1/100th of the remaining amount for all this trouble.
Based on numbers's numbers above, the fine is 0.001039% of their annual revenue. If your salary was $100k, an equivalent fine would be $1.04. Wouldn't people speed more often if they got caught once a year and paid a $1 fine?
Why do you think we should be so much more lenient with companies that knowingly break the law and make life worse for thousands of less fortunate people?
Sigh. HN users aren't saying that. They get upset because the fine is utterly fucking irrelevant and does not serve as a deterrent in any way shape or form.
For labor laws, I’m not sure that’s as bad idea as your sarcasm might indicate. Perhaps, instead, “a mandatory fine shall be levied of 100% of direct and indirect labor expenses (including benefits, unpaid wages, and court-ordered wages) during each calendar year in which labor violations occurred”. That way there’s a natural cap on it to satisfy the courts, but it’s still large enough that any violations are actually a threat to megacorps.
Mostly labor law, and when violated at a systemic degree by the largest corporations against those who do not make enough money to have influence against the free market. (Gig workers and anyone not making at least 3x minimum wage - that's a good place to start.)
I'd actually prefer that people go to jail over it. I would like executives and middle management to be afraid of violating labor law. If you have 3 employees, I could see ignorance being an excuse. However, these are giant corporations that have the economies of scale for this to be really profitable (and inhibit competition) and the resources to make sure they stay on the right side of the law.
Good idea, I think that’s a healthy minimum. If C level fellas were aware of the violations or didn’t do their due diligence then let’s say a 5 year minimum prison sentence.
The issue with small fines is that they can very easily be cheaper than doing the right thing. If you saved money by stealing breakfast every morning for a year, and the only punishment was a fine for the cost of 5 breakfasts, then there's nothing legally enforced discouraging you from having 360 free breakfasts a year.
I am sure this place has lurid fantasies of applying medieval laws of burning people alive or stoning them to death if people concerned are CEOs, billionaire or some such for financial crimes.
On the other hand if laws are applied to their favorite hacker (think one who committed suicide) then the case should not even see the day in court because those laws are of course unlawful.
Eh, it’s the same retributive frustration that leads people to conclude that any violation of any law should result in massive jail time. (And a history, in America, of too-low corporate fines.)
That would even be okay if there were an understanding the fines would continue until the problematic behaviour stops, but it’s unclear from the article whether that’s actually the case.
> The fines against Amazon are small compared with the company’s size — it brought in $574 billion in revenue last year — but significant for a state labor agency. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency charged with preventing workplace safety issues, frequently investigates Amazon workplaces and has issued dozens of citations, but is severely limited in the size of fines it can bring.
I mean, so? And what is it limited by, given a limit on fines is essentially a limit on the size of the company that can be regulated?
> California investigated two Amazon facilities near Los Angeles and in May found that the company failed to “provide written notice of quotas to which each employee is subject,” according to a copy of the citation shared with The Washington Post by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for improving working conditions at warehouses.
Very few workplaces have written quotas for employees. Be angry about Amazon or whatever, but let's just be real that if Amazon is guilty of heinous crimes for not giving workers a strict written quota, so are 98% of other employers, large and small.
green-eclipse|1 year ago
IG_Semmelweiss|1 year ago
Why ?
choppaface|1 year ago
"Warehouse Quota Law, which went into effect in 2022 and limits quotas for 'work that must be performed at a specified speed or the worker suffers discipline,' "
So it's not just that Amazon was cracking the whip really hard, Amazon was particularly astray of a particular (and somewhat new) law.
Separately though, Amazon evidently mistreats employees excessively relative to the retailers you mention, e.g. delivery workers would have to pee in bottles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/de...
insane_dreamer|1 year ago
maximinus_thrax|1 year ago
eropple|1 year ago
callalex|1 year ago
It’s really, really, really difficult to interpret your comment in good faith, can you expand on your question? Otherwise you just come across as trying to poison sentiment analysis algorithms.
schneems|1 year ago
I would like to believe you’re an extremely passionate labor rights advocates and that you can hold all corporations to account. If that’s the case could you keep the original text and add an “Edit: my bad. We shouldn’t downplay their harms, but I’m passionate about this, where are more of these conversations happening?”
dylan604|1 year ago
salawat|1 year ago
smugma|1 year ago
solarkraft|1 year ago
fallingknife|1 year ago
JumpCrisscross|1 year ago
It seems to target Amazon, but for good reasons [1].
The law’s principal mode of enforcement is private [2]. This fine appears to be more the state laying a trail of breadcrumbs for private attorneys to follow than the last word on the matter.
> why is it allowed for all other industries?
Defining what constitutes a quota is hard. If there isn’t evidence of abuse in other settings, it doesn’t make sense to expand the regulatory burden for the hell of it.
[1] https://www.schneiderwallace.com/media/california-new-york-a...
[2] https://www.californiaemploymentlawreport.com/2021/09/califo...
kstrauser|1 year ago
kerkeslager|1 year ago
Competent lawmakers consider enforceability. Enforcing a law like this requires either the creation and funding of an enforcement agency, or additional funding to an existing agency to enforce it. If your law applies to all industries, that funding is massive and gets struck down--either the law simply isn't passed, or the law is passed but is a totally ineffective political gesture. There are rare exceptions, where there's political will to actually put together that funding (for example: ObamaCare), but then you run into the complexity of how such a law interplays with the various industries and parties impacted, and getting the enforcement of such a law right takes decades of tweaking and handling edge cases, which may never actually work.
Long story short, I'd much rather see small laws that target small, well-understood problems and fix them, than see unenforceable feel-good political gestures or some politician's magnum opus for his legacy that tries to do something too complicated for anyone to understand.
mrgoldenbrown|1 year ago
siffin|1 year ago
Amazon is the third company in California to be hit with fines under this law, joining Sysco and Dollar General, which were fined $318,000 and $1.3 million in October and November, respectively, according to copies of the citations shared with The Post.
23B1|1 year ago
2. Escalating penalties. Implement a system of escalating penalties for repeated violations w/increased monitoring.
3. Transparency. Publicly disclose the details of labor violations and the fines imposed.
4. Targeted sanctions. Temporary suspension of licenses, government contracts, at local, state & federal level.
5. Victim comp. Ensure that a portion of fines go towards comping the affected workers.
Aurornis|1 year ago
This is a fine for a local violation. Trying to make it proportional to the entire company's size (which expands far beyond those locations and even business types) would be insane.
The fines are calculated in proportion to the estimated damage and potential profits.
> Escalating penalties. Implement a system of escalating penalties for repeated violations w/increased monitoring.
Fines for repeat violations would be higher, so no need to be upset.
> Transparency. Publicly disclose the details of labor violations and the fines imposed.
Literally in the article. Did anyone read the article? Why are we upset about things that are already explained in the article?
> Targeted sanctions. Temporary suspension of licenses, government contracts, at local, state & federal level.
You want to suspend the Amazon warehouse's license for their first violation for not properly disclosing quotas in writing?
Do you have any idea what happens when you do this? The people employed there are laid off. They lose their jobs. Why would anyone assume that you can just shut down companies and the only people who suffer are some abstract group of executives somewhere?
DaoVeles|1 year ago
One I always advocate for regarding smaller businesses that do this. Legally you must to list your previous business names for 5 years. So "Super happy Mega Global tech - Formerly Bastards Inc." That way you cannot just name change away your reputational problems.
ryandrake|1 year ago
schneems|1 year ago
I know regulatory capture is a thing but it seems like there should be some minimum “Crimes committed for financial gain that are punished with a fine must have a minimum fine of 100x the amount of money they made from the crime”
The 90’s saw a constant stream of journalists and politicians praising 3 strikes laws. Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?
Aloisius|1 year ago
Prohibited by 8th Amendment's ban on excessive fines.
adolph|1 year ago
I suppose that if workers lost out on benefits of approximately the fine amount, the fine becomes a regressive tax since it goes towards general revenue rather than to whom was harmed.
raoulw|1 year ago
User23|1 year ago
benreesman|1 year ago
harimau777|1 year ago
zdragnar|1 year ago
It doesn't matter where the profits go; in this case, management at two warehouses did something wrong, and the fine reflects the scope of the harm done.
If this could be proven to be happening illegally at every warehouse nationwide, then it becomes a larger issue and there will be larger personalities.
ourmandave|1 year ago
But does the next time fine consider priors?
EasyMark|1 year ago
ivanjermakov|1 year ago
cush|1 year ago
6510|1 year ago
ipaddr|1 year ago
shreezus|1 year ago
Dylan16807|1 year ago
The important thing is whether the punishment fits the crime.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
paulddraper|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
the_optimist|1 year ago
nickff|1 year ago
metadat|1 year ago
system2|1 year ago
Arch-TK|1 year ago
nielsbot|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
itsTyrion|1 year ago
m463|1 year ago
mouse_|1 year ago
timetraveller26|1 year ago
numbers|1 year ago
Source: https://www.junglescout.com/blog/how-much-does-amazon-make-i...
JumpCrisscross|1 year ago
That not only reduces the deterrence factor. It delays private enforcement by the harmed employees who would have otherwise relied on the commission’s facts in court without the colour of them being overturned on appeal.
jvanderbot|1 year ago
bhelkey|1 year ago
[1] https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/amazon-warehouses...
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
This is tough because we had fine ceilings for a good reason. But maybe we should start considering proportional charges (+ maybe a fine floor) at this rate.
paulddraper|1 year ago
B. California is <0.5% of world population; IDK how much of Amazon's worldwide revenue.
thaumasiotes|1 year ago
BurningFrog|1 year ago
Neither of the parties here lack monetary resources.
ssalka|1 year ago
riiii|1 year ago
dorothybraith|1 year ago
[deleted]
elevatedastalt|1 year ago
[deleted]
daedrdev|1 year ago
Infractions are 200 dollars per infraction for every employee, and are religiously perused by private law firms.
For example, if a company with 100 employees let employees take lunch whenever they wanted, they would be sued for 20K per day this occurred since employers are required to require employees take lunch within 5 hours of starting the day, meaning they could easily look at millions of dollars of fines for trying to be nice to employees that a private law firm would sue them over.
And in the end the majority of the settlement will go to the law firm and the actual person who sued will get 1/100th of the remaining amount for all this trouble.
fallingsquirrel|1 year ago
Why do you think we should be so much more lenient with companies that knowingly break the law and make life worse for thousands of less fortunate people?
hipadev23|1 year ago
altairprime|1 year ago
ebiester|1 year ago
I'd actually prefer that people go to jail over it. I would like executives and middle management to be afraid of violating labor law. If you have 3 employees, I could see ignorance being an excuse. However, these are giant corporations that have the economies of scale for this to be really profitable (and inhibit competition) and the resources to make sure they stay on the right side of the law.
latentcall|1 year ago
0xTJ|1 year ago
geodel|1 year ago
On the other hand if laws are applied to their favorite hacker (think one who committed suicide) then the case should not even see the day in court because those laws are of course unlawful.
JumpCrisscross|1 year ago
optimalsolver|1 year ago
6510|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
sleepybrett|1 year ago
otikik|1 year ago
Where are going to get their peanuts from now?
StarterPro|1 year ago
barnabask|1 year ago
ryandrake|1 year ago
For comparison, for a person making $100K per year, the fine was less than a dollar.
mananaysiempre|1 year ago
> The fines against Amazon are small compared with the company’s size — it brought in $574 billion in revenue last year — but significant for a state labor agency. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency charged with preventing workplace safety issues, frequently investigates Amazon workplaces and has issued dozens of citations, but is severely limited in the size of fines it can bring.
I mean, so? And what is it limited by, given a limit on fines is essentially a limit on the size of the company that can be regulated?
grapescheesee|1 year ago
cush|1 year ago
insane_dreamer|1 year ago
Amazon: Oooohh, scary!!!
bpodgursky|1 year ago
Very few workplaces have written quotas for employees. Be angry about Amazon or whatever, but let's just be real that if Amazon is guilty of heinous crimes for not giving workers a strict written quota, so are 98% of other employers, large and small.
JumpCrisscross|1 year ago
The issue isn’t having or not having quotas. It’s having a quota and not telling employees about it.
ceejayoz|1 year ago
insane_dreamer|1 year ago
That's because they don't have quotas.
If they don't have a __written__ quota then they can't hold employees to a quota; it's as simple as that.