The National Freedom of Information Commission (CNIL), or the French data protection authority, has imposed an amount of 32 million euros on Amazon (AMZN). The data privacy watchdog found that the company’s French warehouses had “overly intrusive systems” in place to monitor employee activities.
Managers at Amazon France Logistique reportedly monitor their employees so closely that they violate several rules of the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation. The CNIL investigation tags the use of barcode scanners at various checkpoints along the chain as intrusive. Amazon strongly refutes any wrongdoing in the use of these devices, stating:
We strongly disagree with the CNIL’s factually incorrect conclusions and reserve the right to appeal. Warehouse management systems are industry standards and are necessary to ensure safety, quality, and efficiency of operations and to track inventory storage and package processing on time and in line with customer expectations.
The CNIL suggests that the employees in this performance management and quality assurance system study are too close together and are under continuous pressure. But Amazon said its Seattle location uses the same equipment, known as a stow machine gun, and a process to ensure streamlined efficiency. If the continuous scanning of an item is too fast and the accuracy is less than his 1.25 seconds, the item will not be scanned and recorded.
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This gadget allows Amazon to track your productivity and inactivity. However, according to the General Data Protection Regulation, such precise monitoring is illegal. CNIL commented as follows:
… Setting up a system to measure work interruptions so accurately was illegal and could have required employees to justify every break or interruption.
