Amazon's French warehouse management unit was fined 32 million euros ($34.9 million) by France's data protection agency on Tuesday for using a "excessively intrusive" surveillance system to track employee performance.

Amazon France Logistique, an organization known by its initials CNIL, said that it tracked worker performance using information from scanners that employees used to handle parcels.

According to a statement from the CNIL, scanners captured idleness periods longer than ten minutes as well as the handling of shipments and parcels "right up to the second".

The other surveillance methods deemed unacceptable by CNIL were the "stow machine gun" which noted if an article was scanned "too fast" or in less than 1.25 seconds.

It said workers were under constant pressure and had to regularly justify absences. Even the time between the employees' entry into the warehouse and the start of work was monitored.

It said they were not adequately informed about the surveillance and the data was kept for 31 days.

The penalties amounted to almost three percent of Amazon France Logistique's total revenue.

According to an Amazon representative, the business disagrees with the results, calling them "factually incorrect and we reserve the right to appeal." They also stated that the necessity of these systems was "to guarantee security, quality, and efficiency."

This system harmed several thousand employees, according to CNIL. In response to media reports and employee complaints, the agency launched an investigation in 2019.

End//voice7news.com