Amazon workers in Vacaville can't take rest breaks, lawsuit says
(Photo courtesy Amazon, Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
A woman who worked as a warehouse employee at an Amazon fulfillment center in Vacaville has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the company failed to provide adequate breaks and engaged in other purported acts of malfeasance.
The lawsuit was filed by Lovenia Scott, a former logistics specialist who worked at the Vacaville warehouse from late 2016 to early 2019.
According to a complaint obtained by Solano NewsNet, Amazon failed to provide full meal breaks and rest periods to Scott and other workers during her time with the company.
Amazon also didn’t cover certain expenses related to personal cell phones that Scott and other workers were required to have in order to perform certain job functions, and the company didn’t provide accurate wage statements as required under the state’s Labor Code, Scott alleged.
An Amazon spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
The lawsuit was initially filed in San Francisco Superior Court in February. It was transferred to federal court in the Northern District of California on Thursday. In documents obtained by Solano NewsNet, an attorney representing Scott said the case needed to be moved because “the monetary damages and restitution sought by [Scott] from [Amazon’s] conduct exceeds the minimal jurisdiction of the Superior Court of the State of California.”
Scott is seeking to recover “unpaid wages, restitution and related relief.” Other Amazon workers could be entitled to a similar award if the lawsuit achieves class action status as sought and if Scott prevails with a victory in court or a settlement.
Prior Criticism
Amazon has been criticized for making it difficult for its workers to take their meal and rest breaks — when they’re able to take them at all.
In the United Kingdom, a watchdog group found that Amazon made it difficult for warehouse employees there to take rest breaks in that workers were required to walk across the warehouse to a designated break area, which often cut into their actual rest time.
In some cases, the employees were so overworked that they skipped bathroom breaks, instead choosing to urinate in beverage containers. When asked why, staffers inside British warehouses said they were afraid of losing their jobs if they stopped working because of production quotas. (Amazon employees in the United States have made similar complaints.)
Those quotas require some Amazon workers to scan a certain amount of packages during their shift while placing other responsibilities on workers who perform different tasks. A system keeps track of how much Amazon employees work during their day, and if the system detects they aren’t scanning packages or performing another task, the system logs it as a “time off task.” If an employee accrues enough “time off tasks” within a certain period, they face disciplinary measure, including the possibility of being fired.
Amazon says the system provides “productivity rate feedback” that helps the company determine which employees need additional guidance, or “coaching” on their job responsibilities. An Amazon spokesperson told reporters last year that less than 5 percent of its workforce “may receive coaching for improvement as a result of extreme outliers in performance.”
The quota system was briefly put on hold early last year as Amazon responded to the start of the coronavirus pandemic. But last summer, it resumed, leading to a lawsuit from workers in New York who complained they were disciplined for not meeting the company’s performance expectations.
Long Lines and Heavy Workloads
Amazon’s quota system was not scrutinized in the federal lawsuit concerning the Vacaville warehouse, but it was inferred based on an allegation made by Scott that claimed the warehouse was short-staffed in a way that left employees overburdened with work.
Even though California law requires employers to provide rest breaks, Scott said they were not part of an employee’s regular schedule, and warehouse managers told workers to take breaks when and if “they could get them.”
But the abundance of tasks lobbed on warehouse workers made rest breaks nearly impossible to take, and some employees — including Scott — simply skipped them.
“The immense volume of work to be completed prevented [Scott] and the putative class members from ever taking their break,” the complaint said. “Plaintiff and the putative class members did not have scheduled rest breaks, and could never leave their work unattended to take their break due to the constant demands placed on them by [Amazon].”
Meal breaks were a little different: The way Amazon scheduled employees at its warehouse meant most workers took their meal break at the same time, which resulted in long lines at a computer system used to clock in and out.
Those lines “could take as long as 10 to 15 minutes,” the complaint said, and that meant workers “were denied a full, 30-minute meal period due to the line of other workers that would form when it was time to clock back in to work,” the complaint said.
In addition to the rest break issues, Scott alleged that she and other workers were forced to use their personal cell phones to perform certain job functions, yet Amazon didn’t compensate them for the use of their personal phones. She also claimed Amazon failed to provide her with accurate wage statements reflecting the overtime she worked.
Mixed Results
The lawsuit filed by Scott earlier this year is not the first time Amazon has come under the legal microscope for issues involving wages and rest breaks.
Earlier this month, Amazon was fined more than $6 million after the California Labor Commissioner’s Office found that a sub-contractor working for the company failed to appropriately pay its delivery drivers after giving them large workloads that resulted in many drivers skipping their meal and rest breaks.
But some cases have not resulted in a win for Amazon workers, including one filed by warehouse employees over Amazon’s practice of searching bags and other belongings before workers leave for the day. Workers sued, alleging Amazon should have paid for the time spent in the warehouse waiting for their bags to be searched, but the Supreme Court sided with Amazon, noting that the employees had clocked out prior to the search and weren’t entitled to compensation.
In recent years, some warehouse employees have skipped the courtroom in favor of the picket line. Last year, workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Sacramento rallied behind a part-time co-worker who was fired for taking time off in order to tend to her dying mother-in-law.
Other workers have made efforts to unionize — attempts that were initially met with intense hostility by Amazon until the company agreed under threat of litigation to stop harassing and threatening union-minded workers.
One of the biggest unionization efforts is happening now at a fulfillment center in Alabama. If they succeed, industry experts say it could set off a wave of similar efforts across the country as employees demand better working conditions, including full rest breaks.