After clearing each homes of the New York State Legislature in June, Governor Kathy Hochul has lastly signed the Warehouse Worker Protection Act. Broadly modeled after AB-701, the landmark labor regulation California enacted earlier this yr, the laws goals to guard employees from unreasonable productiveness quotas. Under the regulation, New York State would require main warehouse firms, together with Amazon, to offer new hires and present workers with documentation detailing their productiveness expectations.
The regulation additionally provides employees the correct to request their quota at any time, together with after their employment ends. Additionally, the laws prohibits firms from imposing quotas that intrude with a employee’s state-mandated meal and restroom breaks. Companies additionally can not hearth somebody for failing to fulfill an undisclosed quota.
“Regulations protecting workers in the warehousing industry have lagged far behind its rapid growth until today,” stated the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), one of many labor teams that pushed for the laws. “The RWDSU has long prioritized the challenge of protecting warehouse workers from stress-induced injuries and illness from limitless quotas and it’s why we pushed for the introduction of the Warehouse Worker Protection Act this year.”
As you may think about, Warehouse Worker Protection Act advocates had Amazon in thoughts once they campaigned for the invoice. The retail big operates greater than 70 amenities throughout the state, greater than half of which have opened for the reason that begin of 2021. In 2020, a report from the Center for Investigative Reporting discovered the corporate anticipated employees at its newer and extra automated success facilities to fulfill unrealistic productiveness quotas that made them extra prone to maintain critical accidents.
Before handing the reins of the retail big to Andy Jassy in 2021, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos denied the corporate had unreasonable productiveness quotas. In his last letter to firm shareholders, he stated Amazon gave employees alternatives to “take informal breaks throughout their shifts,” including the corporate “set achievable performance goals that take into account tenure and actual employee performance data.”