Amazon’s use of surveillance, control, and discipline abuses, injures, and exploits workers.

Recent investigations confirm the dangers that this system (called Rate/TOT) poses to workers’ health and safety--revealing that Amazon’s surveillance system injures workers at rates nearly double industry average, with more than 24,000 serious injuries in warehouses last year.

Amazon engineered this punishing system to increase workers’ speed or rate and control their physical movements in increments of seconds, a metric called time off task (TOT). Rate/TOT determines if there are enough seconds to use the bathroom, for handwashing per COVID-19 guidelines, or for workers to practice social distancing on their way to fulfill an order.

Amazon’s contract delivery drivers face similar surveillance—with the ever-increasing volume of package deliveries in a single shift, drivers are forced to speed through neighborhoods, forgo food during their shift, and skip bathroom breaks. Warehouse workers and delivery drivers unable to skip bathroom breaks or sustain this grueling, dangerous pace of work are disciplined and sometimes fired.

Moreover, Amazon has repeatedly used this data to retaliate against workers who speak out and organize—particularly Black workers who spoke out to protect their colleagues and communities during the pandemic.

To Amazon, this system isn’t broken. Only Congress can protect worker health and safety by guarding against exploitative business models, protecting workers from new forms of tech-driven racial discrimination, and incentivizing innovation that enhances worker well-being.

Lawmakers need to ban Rate/TOT and hold a hearing to investigate Amazon’s harmful, dangerous workplace surveillance practices.

Sign the petition: We must put an end to Amazon’s harmful and controlling surveillance systems.