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New York signs onto the Warehouse Worker Protection Act

After clearing each homes of the New York State Legislature in June, Governor Kathy Hochul has lastly . Broadly modeled after , the landmark labor legislation California enacted earlier this yr, the laws goals to guard employees from unreasonable productiveness quotas. Underneath the legislation, New York State would require main warehouse corporations, together with Amazon, to offer new hires and present staff with documentation detailing their productiveness expectations.

The legislation additionally provides employees the precise to request their quota at any time, together with after their employment ends. Moreover, the laws prohibits corporations from imposing quotas that intervene with a employee’s state-mandated meal and restroom breaks. Corporations additionally can’t hearth somebody for failing to satisfy an undisclosed quota.

“Rules defending employees within the warehousing business have lagged far behind its fast progress till as we speak,” mentioned the Retail, Wholesale and Division Retailer Union (RWDSU), one of many labor teams that pushed for the laws. “The RWDSU has lengthy prioritized the problem of defending warehouse employees from stress-induced accidents and sickness from limitless quotas and it’s why we pushed for the introduction of the Warehouse Employee Safety Act this yr.”

As you possibly can think about, Warehouse Employee Safety 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 because the begin of 2021. In 2020, a from the Heart for Investigative Reporting discovered the corporate anticipated employees at its newer and extra automated achievement facilities to satisfy unrealistic productiveness quotas that made them extra more likely to maintain severe accidents.

Earlier than in 2021, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos denied the corporate had unreasonable productiveness quotas. In his , he mentioned Amazon gave employees alternatives to “take casual breaks all through their shifts,” including the corporate “set achievable efficiency objectives that consider tenure and precise worker efficiency knowledge.”

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