New NY state regulation takes goal at warehouse work quotas like those Amazon makes use of

Yesterday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Warehouse Worker Protection Act (WWPA), which protects warehouse distribution employees from undisclosed or illegal work velocity quotas. In addition to defending warehouse employees from unreasonably demanding work quotas, the regulation would require distribution facilities to tell employees of their efficiency and rights within the office.

While the regulation doesn’t goal Amazon particularly, its authors say it was designed to handle the administration practices and quotas that the e-commerce big locations on its workers, which has typically been criticized for the dehumanizing expectations positioned on its warehouse employees.

The WWPA follows the same regulation that was passed in California last September (AB-701) that required employers to offer their warehouse employees with written descriptions of their quotas and likewise prevents employers from punishing employees for failing to fulfill quotas that weren’t disclosed to them.

Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union president Stuart Appelbaum defined why his group pushed for the laws, saying, “Amazon alone has opened more than 70 facilities in the state and over half of those facilities have been built since January 2021. At the same time, we have seen increased injury rates for warehouse workers. Due to extreme work quotas, warehouse workers have suffered heart attacks, strokes, repetitive motion injuries, and irreparable life-long joint and back pain.”

According to a December sixteenth launch put out by the United States Department of Labor, OSHA issued Amazon a citation for 14 recordkeeping violations, together with failures to file and misclassification of accidents and diseases of its employees. These violations solely embody the investigations carried out at solely six of Amazon’s 110 lively US achievement facilities.