California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Wednesday protecting warehouse retail workers by requiring employers to clearly define what their production quotas are to their staff, and prevent them from firing or retaliating against their employees for being unable to meet unsafe quotas.

The state labor commissioner will be given the authority to issue citations to companies that violate the new law. The law, which will take effect in 2022, will allow for access to workers' compensation data to find facilities where there are high rates of injury and investigate if it was due to unsafe quotas. Regulators would have to consider investigating a workplace if the employee injury rate is 1.5 times higher than the warehousing industry’s national average.

The new law will also bar companies from tracking an employee’s bathroom breaks and prohibits the firing of employees for failing to meet quotas because they were in the bathroom.

"We cannot allow corporations to put profit over people. The hardworking warehouse employees who have helped sustain us during these unprecedented times should not have to risk injury or face punishment as a result of exploitative quotas that violate basic health and safety," Newsom said in a statement.

The law was authored by Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a lawyer and former labor leader. She accused Amazon of disciplining employees at the direction of “an algorithm,” saying the company tracks employees and can determine if anything is “off task” that isn’t directly related to on-the-job activities.

“Amazon is pushing workers to risk their bodies for next-day delivery, while they can’t so much as use the restroom without fearing retaliation," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez cited reports from several advocacy groups, including the Warehouse Resource Center and the Strategic Organizing Center, to assert Amazon employees are more likely to suffer a work-related injury than those working in other warehouses.

Amazon employs thousands of workers across the country and is second to only Walmart as the retail giant relied heavily on its workers during the pandemic as they plan to hire an additional 100,000 workers this year. Amazon workers have complained about the unsafe working conditions as investigations by news organizations have found the rate of serious injury at Amazon is nearly double the industry average.

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