California fines Amazon nearly $6 mn for illegal work quotas at warehouses

California has fined Amazon a total of USD 5.9 million, alleging the e-commerce giant worked warehouse employees so hard that it put their safety at risk, officials said.

The two citations issued in May by the California Labor Commissioner's Office said Amazon.com Services LLC ran afoul of the state's Warehouse Quota Law at facilities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, east of Los Angeles.

The law, which took effect in 2022, "requires warehouse employers to provide employees written notice of any quotas they must follow, including the number of tasks they need to perform per hour and any discipline that could come" from not meeting the requirements, the labour commissioner's office said in a statement.

Amazon was fined USD 1.2 million at a warehouse in Redlands and USD 4.7 million at another in nearby Moreno Valley.

The company said Tuesday that it disagrees with the allegations and has appealed the citations.

"The truth is, we don't have fixed quotas. At Amazon, individual