The National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties – more commonly known as the CNIL – has just announced that it has sanctioned Amazon France Logistique “with a fine of 32 million euros for having set up an activity monitoring system and excessively intrusive employee performance.
In a press release, the CNIL explained in particular that “indicators measuring the inactivity time of employee scanners” had been put in place. In addition, the body judged “illegal” the implementation of a system measuring interruptions of activity so precisely and leading the employee to potentially have to justify each break or interruption.
For the CNIL, the collection of data by scanners used by warehouse employees to process packages constitutes an “excessive activity and performance monitoring system”, while these tools record inactivity times greater than ten minutes or the rate of package processing.
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The French privacy watchdog sanctioned AFL on the basis of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and imposed a fine equivalent to around 3% of the French company’s turnover. A sanction “almost unprecedented on the percentage of turnover”, she underlined, the maximum incurred being 4%. Three indicators recorded by the scanners and transmitted to managers particularly moved the control body.
The “stow machine gun” which notes when an item is scanned “too quickly”, in less than 1.25 seconds, and the “idle time” which signals a period of inactivity of a scanner for more than ten minutes . Another indicator measures the time elapsed “between the moment the employee badged at the entrance to the site” and the moment he scanned his first package, the CNIL further explained.
The body considers that this system leads employees to justify any interruption, even “of three or four minutes”, of the activity of its scanner, thus putting “continuous pressure on them”. “We strongly disagree with the conclusions of the CNIL which are factually incorrect and we reserve the right to appeal,” responded an Amazon spokesperson in a press release. The group has two months to file an appeal before the Council of State.
Several thousand employees are affected by these indicators, notes the CNIL, which opened a procedure in 2019 following press articles and complaints from employees. The CNIL also singled out AFL for not having sufficiently informed its employees about its video surveillance system. She indicated that she “reserves the possibility of carrying out new checks”.
