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Among the pandemic’s biggest economic winners is Amazon, which nearly doubled its annual profits last year. 21 billion dollars and one at pace this year will far exceed that total.

Profits have come from millions of Americans who value the convenience of expedited home delivery, but critics complain that the deal comes at a huge cost to workers, whom they say the company has overtaken physically.

That labor model could begin to change under a California bill that would require warehouse employers like Amazon to disclose productivity quotas for workers whose progress they often track using algorithms. .

“The controlling function is taken over by computers,” said Councilor Lorena Gonzalez, author of the bill. “But they don’t take the human factor into account.”

The bill, passed by the legislature in May and expected to be voted on by the State Senate this week, would ban any quota that prevents workers from using state breaks or using the toilet when necessary, or that prevents employers from complying with health and safety rules. security laws.

The legislation has seen intense opposition from business groups, who claim it will spark a costly litigation explosion and penalize an entire industry for perceived excesses of a single employer.

“They go after a company, but they also bring everyone else in the supply chain under that umbrella,” said Rachel Michelin, president of the California Retailers Association. on whose board Amazon sits.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel declined to comment on the bill, but said in a statement that “performance targets are set based on actual employee performance over a period of time,” and they consider health and safety as well as employee experience. thoughts.

“Terminations due to performance issues are rare – less than 1 percent,” Ms. Nantel added.

The company faces increasing scrutiny over its treatment of workers, including: an expected decision A district director of the National Labor Relations Board said he illegally interfered with a union vote at a warehouse in Alabama. The finding could lead to a new election there, but Amazon said it would object to retaining the original vote it won.

In June, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters passed a resolution committing the union to provide “all necessary resources” to organize Amazon workers. put pressure on the company through political channels. Teamsters officials have been involved in successful efforts to disavow Amazon tax deduction in indiana and Approval for a facility in Colorado and supporters of California legislation.

Both sides seem to view the struggle over Amazon’s quotas as high risks. “We know the future of work falls on this algorithm, the artificial intelligence type,” said Ms. Gonzalez, author of the bill. “If we don’t intervene now, the next step will be other companies.”

Michelin, head of the retail association, stressed that the data is “private information” and said advocates of the bill “wanted this data because it helps unify distribution centers”.

A report by the Center for Strategic Organizing, a group supported by four trade unions, shows that: Amazon’s nationwide serious injury rate In 2020, it was nearly double that of the rest of the warehousing industry and more than double the warehouses at top competitor Walmart.

Asked about the findings, Amazon spokesperson Ms Nantel did not address them directly, but the company’s recent entered into partnership with a nonprofit safety advocacy group to develop ways to prevent musculoskeletal injuries. He also said that Amazon has invested over $300 million in security measures this year, such as redesigning workstations.

Amazon employees often complain that supervisors force them to work at physically exhausting speeds.

“There were a lot of grandmothers,” said one worker. study It was signed by the Los Angeles County Labor Federation, another supporter of the California bill. Managers “come to these old women and say, ‘Hey, I need you to hurry up’ and then you could see on her face that she almost wanted to cry. It’s like, ‘This is literally the fastest thing my body can go’.

Yesenia Barrera, a former Amazon worker in California, said managers told her she had to pull, unbox, and scan 200 items an hour from the conveyor belt. He said he usually achieves this goal by minimizing bathroom use.

“I ignore using the toilet-type stuff to be able to do that,” Ms. Barrera said in an interview for this article. “When the bell rang for the break, I felt I had to do a few more things before I took off.”

Repetitive strain injuries are a particular problem in the storage industry, as companies automate their operations, says Edward Flores, lecturer at the Merced University of California Community and Work Center.

Studying injuries in the industry, Dr. “You are responding to the speed at which a machine is moving,” Flores said. “The more they rely on robots, the higher the incidence of repetitive movements and therefore repetitive injuries.” became Amazon leader in the adoption of warehouse robotics.

California plays a huge role in the e-commerce and distribution industry, both because of its huge economy and its status as a technology hub, and because it is home to the ports where most of Amazon’s imported inventory comes from. The Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles has one of the highest Amazon fulfillment centers in the country.

Ms. Gonzalez said she met with Amazon officials after promoting a product. similar invoice last year, they refused to use quotas, instead saying they trusted targets and workers were not penalized for failing to meet those targets.

At a meeting just days before Congress passed this year’s bill, he said Amazon officials acknowledged that they could do more to improve the health and safety of their employees, but did not offer specific recommendations beyond coaching employees on how to be more productive.

Ms Gonzalez recalled that at one point in the more recent meeting, an Amazon official expressed concern that some employees would abuse their more generous time allocations to use the restroom, before another official weighed in to highlight the issue.

“Someone else tried to take him back,” he said. “It’s often said in silence. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it.”

The bill’s path has always seemed tougher in the State Senate, where changes have weakened it. The bill no longer directs the state’s occupational health and safety agency to develop a rule that prevents warehouse injuries from overwork or other physical stresses.

Instead, it gives the state labor commission’s office access to data on quotas and injuries so it can speed up enforcement. Workers will also be able to sue employers for eliminating excessively strict quotas.

Ms Gonzalez said she was confident about the Senate vote, which should come by the close of the legislative session on Friday, but that business groups are still working hard to derail it.

Retailer group chairman Michelin said Senate committees’ changes made the bill more acceptable and its members could support a measure that gives regulators more resources to enforce health and safety rules. But he said he had serious concerns about the way the bill would empower workers to sue their employers.

As long as that provision remains in the bill, he said, “we will never support it.”