man, this is going to set them back at least 15 seconds.
Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
101–110 of 253 posts
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#102[flagged]
Additionally California PAGA lawsuits are notorious for nearly bankrupting small businesses. This case wasn't PAGA, but still people need to realize that sometimes these things are more nuanced than they appear. Infractions are 200 dollars per infraction for every employee, and are religiously perused by private law firms. For example, if a company with 100 employees let employees take lunch whenever they wanted, the…
I don't have first-hand experience with PAGA lawsuits, and I am not a lawyer, but:
> employers are required to require employees take lunch within 5 hours of starting the day
This seems like a misrepresentation of the relevant statutes.
Per Brinker Restaurant Corporation v. Superior Court,
> In a unanimous opinion authored by Associate Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, the court explained that neither state statutes nor the orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) compel an employer to ensure employees cease all work during meal periods. Instead, under state law an employer must provide its employees an uninterrupted 30-minute duty-free period during which the employee is at liberty to come and go as he or she pleases.
https://www.courts.ca.gov/17489.htm
In other words: if the employee has the option of taking that half hour break at an appropriate time of day, then I don't see a lawsuit as being justified unless there's legislation from the past 12 years (very plausible) that renders this precedent obsolete.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#103[flagged]
Based on numbers's numbers above, the fine is 0.001039% of their annual revenue. If your salary was $100k, an equivalent fine would be $1.04. Wouldn't people speed more often if they got caught once a year and paid a $1 fine? Why do you think we should be so much more lenient with companies that knowingly break the law and make life worse for thousands of less fortunate people?
It was for two specific locations, so it seems it should be based on something related to those specific location, rather than worldwide profits across all, unrelated, business units.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#104[dead]
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously you would have a floor, just like taxes do.
Yep, plenty of fines work this way. It's how GDPR works: percent of turnover (revenue) or a floor, whichever is higher [1]. And worst case scenario define revenue in the fine's terms in a way that it disallows accounting tricks. [1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-83-gdpr/#:~:text=turnover
That the max fine for GDPR, not the min.
GDPR is really a "fine whatever they want" regime, starting small and increasing for non compliance.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Countries should take stock equity over fines. It dilutes the owners share value and punishes stockholders who don't make a company's' boards accountable. With ownership, the government also then has the ability to 'peer behind the veil' more easily and make sure management is behaving. Finally, if a company continues to misbehave the government over time takes ownership and can then replace the board (think a corpor…
> With ownership, the government also then has the ability to 'peer behind the veil' more easily and make sure management is behaving You want every politician you don’t like in the country having this power? > if a company continues to misbehave the government over time takes ownership and can then replace the board This is expropriation. (It’s also fines with extra steps and ongoing costs.) > think a corporate equi…
Is that really true? CDP stops the operation. Massive fines would allow the company to continue operating sold off. The fines may be financially worse for the owner but in terms of the unlawful and antisocial behavior the death penalty would more directly end the conduct by ending their operation.
In many cases this would be preferable I think: the owners may well have been unaware of the bad conduct and at least individually unable to prevent it. In that case, ending operations and unwinding the company and returning whatever wealth can be recovered to the owners may be a more fair thing to do.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are secret quotas common in other settings? I don't think I've ever been told about one, and I had a whole lot of other jobs before starting this career.
Common or not, if the practice is bad why make the law specific to warehouse workers instead of making it a general law that applies to everyone?
What other industries do you think would benefit from this? Warehouse work might be unique enough to be afforded unique protections. There a lot of dark patterns you can employ against your workers in those settings, creating orders that are hard to fulfill on time, arranging your warehouse in ways that reduce worker productivity or even safety. Since many warehouses are moving consumer items and often food items there does seem to be reason to consider them separately from other industries.
They also have a separate labor union in many regions.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With ownership, the government also then has the ability to 'peer behind the veil' more easily and make sure management is behaving You want every politician you don’t like in the country having this power? > if a company continues to misbehave the government over time takes ownership and can then replace the board This is expropriation. (It’s also fines with extra steps and ongoing costs.) > think a corporate equi…
Is that really true? CDP stops the operation. Massive fines would allow the company to continue operating sold off. The fines may be financially worse for the owner but in terms of the unlawful and antisocial behavior the death penalty would more directly end the conduct by ending their operation. In many cases this would be preferable I think: the owners may well have been unaware of the bad conduct and at least ind…
> CDP stops the operation
What do you do with the assets? If you’re reorganizing them, this is no different from putting e.g. the automakers through bankruptcy. If you’re taking them over, it’s no different from a bail-out. If you’re liquidating them, why are you liquidating them? Just fine them and let them sort out the selling of assets.
> ending operations and unwinding the company and returning whatever wealth can be recovered to the owners
They’d just reconstitute the company. Presumably they weren’t seeking liquidation beforehand, and see the combined assets worth more than them individually.
Corporate death penalty is a distracting term from massive fines (and license revocations). Fines are a possibility. Corporate death penalties are needlessly, some might say intentionally, over complicated in a way that makes them far favourable to massive fines or revocations.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Additionally California PAGA lawsuits are notorious for nearly bankrupting small businesses. This case wasn't PAGA, but still people need to realize that sometimes these things are more nuanced than they appear. Infractions are 200 dollars per infraction for every employee, and are religiously perused by private law firms. For example, if a company with 100 employees let employees take lunch whenever they wanted, the…
I don't have first-hand experience with PAGA lawsuits, and I am not a lawyer, but: > employers are required to require employees take lunch within 5 hours of starting the day This seems like a misrepresentation of the relevant statutes. Per Brinker Restaurant Corporation v. Superior Court, > In a unanimous opinion authored by Associate Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar, the court explained that neither state statutes nor t…
I'm sure what I said about 5 hours is mostly accurate, the specific rule in California labor law mentions the 5 hour requirement.
> In compliance with California labor laws, nonexempt employees are entitled to an unpaid meal or lunch break lasting a minimum of 30 minutes for shifts exceeding five hours. This break, which should commence before the completion of the fifth hour of work, can be waived only if the workday does not surpass six hours.
This means Employees are basically required to take the meal break before 5 hours, because a more forgiving policy of take it whenever you want will incur a PAGA lawsuit that will be settled due to the extreme potential fines.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of that was from Californian warehouses? Because if you don’t do that math, the fine gets overturned by the courts. That not only reduces the deterrence factor. It delays private enforcement by the harmed employees who would have otherwise relied on the commission’s facts in court without the colour of them being overturned on appeal.
The fine doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist. It's like if someone stole $1000 worth of merchandise from a store and the only punishment is a $1000 fine... and you get to keep what you stole. Why be law abiding when you could break the law and potentially make more money? You'd have to be stupid to be law abiding in a system like that.
It's like if someone stole $1000 worth of merchandise from a store and the only punishment is a $1000 fine... and you get to keep what you stole.