The CNIL fined AMAZON FRANCE LOGISTIQUE €32 million for excessive employee monitoring
12 February 2024
On the 27th of December 2023, the CNIL fined AMAZON FRANCE LOGISTIQUE €32 million for implementing an excessively intrusive system to monitor employee activity and performance, as well as for deploying a video surveillance system that lacked adequate information disclosure and security measures. Indeed, employees were given a scanner to document the performance of tasks assigned to them in real time. Following press articles concerning the company's practices alongside complaints from employees, the CNIL launched an investigation that revealed the following breaches of the GDPR:
- Failure to ensure lawful processing (Article 6 GDPR) as AMAZON FRANCE LOGISTIQUE used three illegal indicators ("Stow Machine Gun" indicator, "idle time" indicator and the "latency under ten minutes" indicator) to track the inactivity time of the employees' scanners.
- Failure to comply with the obligation to provide information and transparency (Articles 12 and 13 GDPR) as the company collected personal data from temporary workers without effectively informing them.
- Failure to comply with the principle of data minimisation (Article 5.1.c GDPR) as the CNIL found that the company excessively and intrusively monitored employees' activity and performance by collecting data from the scanner. Additionally, the CNIL deemed it excessive to retain the entirety of the data, including corresponding statistical indicators, pertaining to both employees and temporary workers within the system for a duration of 31 days.
- Failure to fulfil obligations regarding information provision and transparency (Articles 12 and 13 GDPR), as well as their duty to ensure the security of personal data (Article 32 GDPR) in the context of video surveillance processing. The CNIL found that employees and external visitors had not been properly informed about the video surveillance systems and the access to the video surveillance software lacked sufficient security measures.
Authors: Nicolas Quoy, Partner; Antoine Boullet, Senior Associate; Muriel McCracken, Trainee Solicitor.
