“The CNIL considered it was excessive to keep all the data collected by the system, as well as the resulting statistical indicators, for all employees and temporary workers, for a period of 31 days,” the regulator stated.
The fine followed a probe that began in 2019 following media articles and worker complaints. Several thousand staff were affected by the surveillance, the agency said.
‘Quality and efficiency’
Amazon said at the time the systems were industry-standard and necessary “to guarantee security, quality and efficiency”.
It said the system monitoring the speed at which items are stowed was necessary to ensure workers were properly checking items for damage or other problems before they were scanned for shipping.
The company said at the time it would nevertheless disable the system monitoring handling speeds and extend idle-time alerts from 10 minutes to 30.