Amazon France Logistique – €32,000,000 Fine (France, 2023)

In November 2019, the French DPA ("CNIL") carried out inspections on the premises of Amazon France Logistique (“controller”) to apprehend the processing of employee's personal data via scanners and video surveillance. The CNIL discovered that when an employee was assigned to a direct task, they were equipped with a scanner, enabling them to identify themselves, receive instructions, scan labels of the items they were processing etc. This allowed the controller to continuously collect data relating to the activity of employees assigned to direct tasks making it possible to measure the employee’s activity, in particular by counting the number of units they process over a given period. Inactivity indicators were reported in real time for each employee. One of the indicators named Stow Gun Machine allowed the controller to monitor each gesture performed by the employee in each direct task assigned to them, by associating with it an error indicator each time their speed was less than 1,25 seconds. These indicators were stored for 31 days and could be consulted both via raw data and in the form of statistics. Weekly performance reports were drawn up for each employee on the basis of the indicators collected, and contained weekly, daily and hourly statistics on compliance with quality procedures and productivity. Following the on-site inspections, numerous exchanges took place between the CNIL and the controller, from November 2019 to January 2021. The CNIL started a sanctioning procedure against the controller on 28 January 2021. Preliminarily, the CNIL established that Amazon France Logistique was the controller under Article 4(7) GDPR. The DPA considered that the determination of processing was linked to Amazon’s French human resources management. Although the employee management process is based on a common framework for the entities of Amazon group, they are subject to local adaptations decided autonomously by the local branches of the controller. The CNIL co