Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoes transparent productivity quotas for employees of Amazon warehouses and others

Gov. Mike Dunleavy last week vetoed a measure that would have required written productivity quotas to be made available to workers in large warehouses in Alaska, such as one that Amazon recently opened in Anchorage.

House Bill 88 allows warehouse workers to request an explanation of productivity quotas that apply to them, and the consequences if they fail to meet those quotas. The bill also prohibited productivity quotas that would restrict an employee’s bathroom breaks.

Rep. George Rauscher, a Sutton Republican and a Dunleavy ally, was the prime sponsor behind the bill in the House. He was inspired to carry the legislation after working in warehouses on the East Coast in the 1970s. As a young man, Rauscher said he watched an older employee collapse and get taken away to the hospital after stacking pallets in stifling summer heat. The measure, Rauscher said, was about improving transparency of working conditions for warehouse employees.

“It just gives the worker a chance to think about whether or not they’re going to be able to keep up with what’s required of them,” he said.

Teamsters Local 959, based out of Anchorage, were key supporters of the bill. Political coordinator Patrick FitzGerald said the union was disappointed Dunleavy had vetoed further protections for warehouse workers.

HB 88 would have applied to around a dozen employers across Alaska that include Carrs-Safeway, the United Parcel Service and Amazon, FitzGerald said. Lawmakers anecdotally referred to it as the “Amazon bill” as it advanced through the Legislature.

”We hated calling it that, because we didn’t want to single out an individual warehouse above any others,” he added.

In recent years, similar laws have been enacted in California and Washington. The New York Times reported that Amazon was fined $6 million in June for violating California’s workplace quota law 59,000 times in a six-month period.

North Pole Republican Sen. Robb Myers, a North Slope truck driver who is not a member of the Teamsters, carried the bill in the Senate. He said the impetus behind wanting to improve transparency at warehouses came from “pretty striking” stories about conditions at Amazon facilities across the country. But he emphasized that he hadn’t heard similar stories at Amazon’s warehouses in Alaska.

On Tuesday, Dunleavy vetoed another bill that would have cut state taxes on people who rent the cars through Turo and other car-sharing platforms. A second bill Dunleavy vetoed on Tuesday would have improved accessibility to prescription birth control. All three measures passed the Legislature with bipartisan support.

On the penultimate day of the legislative session, the Senate overwhelmingly passed HB 88, the bill that applied to warehouse workers, on an 18-2 vote. Republican minority Sens. Mike Shower and Shelley Hughes were the only two no votes.

In the House, 23 lawmakers voted to pass the measure in the final hours of the legislative session. All 16 members of the mostly Democratic minority voted for the bill, alongside seven members of the Republican led-majority. All of the 16 no votes were from members of the GOP-led majority and Rep. David Eastman, a Wasilla Republican, who doesn’t sit with either caucus.

Despite the bipartisan support, Rauscher said that he was called on Tuesday by a member of the Dunleavy administration to tell him the bill would be vetoed.

“I vetoed this bill because it creates excessive regulation of State businesses, thereby thwarting business development and economic opportunities in Alaska,” Dunleavy wrote in his Tuesday veto message.

The Alaska Chamber of Commerce opposed the measure when it was before the Legislature. The association of 700 Alaska businesses argued that the disclosure requirements would be “logistically infeasible” at many warehouses, “making a one-size-fits-all notice requirement impractical and overly burdensome.”

Kati Capozzi, President and CEO of the Alaska Chamber, said by text message on Thursday that HB 88 was “overly broad” and could have led to “unintended consequences.”

“It’s bad policy and sends a terrible message to companies considering investing in Alaska,” she said.

The Alaska Chamber continued to express concerns to Dunleavy after the bill had passed the Legislature, but Capozzi said the business association “did not make any sort of a formal request for a veto.”

When the bill was first introduced, it would have applied to warehouses with 200 or more employees or 1,000 employees over multiple sites. The Senate amended the measure to apply to facilities with 100 or more workers. Myers said that the expansion of the new quota rule had concerned some conservative lawmakers.

In a Wednesday interview, Rauscher said he was disappointed his bill had been vetoed, and that he still had questions for Dunleavy.

“I’ll have my chance to visit with the governor, and we’ll talk about it,” he said.

Rauscher is running unopposed for his House seat in Sutton. He said on Wednesday that he was unsure if he would reintroduce the bill when he returned to Juneau next year.

“If we’re to do it, we have to figure out what went wrong and whether it’s correctable,” he said. “Because I’m not going to hand in the same thing that didn’t work, and think it’s going to get a different result.”