Standards for productivity rates are commonplace among US warehouses and distribution centers, but were largely under the radar until attention turned to Amazon and its widespread use of what the media often calls “production quotas” in the last decade.
Supply Chain Digest Says...
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The questions raised by the similar California and New York laws are whether workers will flock to the regulators and the courts alleging the provisions are not being met..
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The general theme of that media attention has been that the standards are too high and maybe even impossible to achieve, often not even allowing enough time to take a restroom break, and that workers are often summarily fired for failure to meet Amazon’s standards, among other alleged treatments of fulfillment center workers.
In response, legislators in a few left-leaning states passed laws that SCDigest would term involve light regulation relative to productivity quotas in distribution. Naturally the first was in California, which was them followed by New York in passing a quota rules. While these laws are of course neutral in their language, it is clear the primary target is Amazon.
Now Washington state has joined the movement.
As reported last week by David Sparkman, editor of the ACWI Advance newsletter of the American Chain of Warehouses organization, the recently enacted Washington law will go into effect on July 1, 2024 and is said to strongly resemble New York’s law, which becomes effective on July 19 of 2023.
The Washington law covers employers with at least 100 nonexempt employees at a single warehouse/distribution center in Washington or at least 1,000 nonexempt employees at one or more warehouse/distribution centers that are located in the state.
The industries covered by the new law are warehousing and storage; merchant wholesalers of durable and nondurable goods; and electronic shopping and mail-order houses.
The act defines quota as a work performance standard where an employee is assigned or required to perform at a specified productivity speed, or perform a quantified number of tasks, or to handle or produce a quantified amount of material, within a defined time period.
A first-time violation of the new law or any related rules can result in a civil penalty of $1,000. The state will create a schedule of enhanced penalties for repeat violations, up to $10,000 per violation.
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 The key provisions of the Washington are as follows: Quotas must:
• include time for rest breaks
• provide reasonable travel time to rest and meal break locations
• must account for the architecture and geography of the facility, time to do work subject to the quota, and time to use the bathroom.
So these provisions seem not too burdensome if reasonably applied. The questions raised by the similar California and New York laws are whether workers will flock to the regulators and the courts alleging the provisions are not being met.
Another concern that has been raised is that union organizers use the threat of such actions to pressure warehouse owners to accept unionization in exchange for withdrawal of the claims or the threat of such actions.
We’ll keep our eyes on this issue.
Any thoughts on these warehous quota rules? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
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