The e-commerce giant Amazon has been fined nearly 6 million dollars by a California agency for violations of a new law requiring the disclosure of work productivity quotas.

The California labor commissioner announced on Tuesday that two Amazon warehouses have been fined for failing to meet legal requirements for disclosing the quotas set for employees. This is the first time the law, introduced in 2022, has been applied. The law was mainly enacted to address concerns about the labor practices and treatment of Amazon’s hourly workers.

Undisclosed quotas put workers under increased pressure to work faster, which can lead to higher injury rates and other violations as workers are forced to skip breaks," said Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower.

An Amazon spokesperson stated that the company has appealed the decision and emphasized that employees can review their performance at any time and are encouraged to do so.

The California law targets a central aspect of work in an Amazon warehouse, where the company uses performance quotas to measure employee productivity while reducing shipping times. Employees and labor activists have argued that performance quotas can lead to injuries.

Safety issues in Amazon warehouses are at the center of disputes between labor activists and the company. Data and studies from the US Department of Labor have shown that workers at Amazon are more likely to get injured than in other similar facilities.

Amazon has stated that its safety record has improved and that employee performance is not measured as a fixed system, but rather over time and based on the performance of the entire site. The company has implemented safety measures in its retail warehouses, including an education program for safety and well-being, as well as the use of new robotic technologies designed to help workers perform their tasks in more comfortable positions.

The Californian authority imposed penalties on warehouses in the so-called Inland Empire, an area in Southern California that hosts about 500 large distribution centers. The Inland Empire is a hub for Amazon warehouses and has been a place where workers have tried to organize.

In the past, Amazon warehouses have been cited for other reasons. Last year, several Amazon facilities were cited by federal labor authorities for safety violations as part of a broader review of their safety practices.

The company is also facing renewed pressure from unions. The Amazon Labor Union, which organized the first warehouse in the company's history in 2022, has voted this week to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of America's most prominent unions. The Amazon union had struggled to gain a foothold before the vote.

The two groups declared that they want to fight together for safer working conditions and to achieve a first collective agreement with Amazon. Amazon has stated that it rejects unions because it prefers direct relationships with the workers.