Amazon threatens to fire workers who are outspoken on its environmental policies
Amazon threatens to fire workers who are
outspoken on its environmental policies
During a Sept. 20 protest, thousands of Amazon
employees walked out and criticized the company’s climate policies and
practices. Amazon has warned at least two employees who publicly... More
Jay Greene Jan. 2, 2020 at 4:18 am
Amazon has warned at least two employees
who publicly criticized the Seattle-based company’s environmental policies that
they could be fired for future violations of its communications policy.
A lawyer in the e-commerce giant’s
employee-relations group sent a letter to two workers quoted in an October
Washington Post report, accusing them of violating the company’s external
communications policy. An email sent to Maren Costa, a principal
user-experience designer at the company, and reviewed by The Post, warned that
future infractions could “result in formal corrective action, up to and
including termination of your employment with Amazon.”
The lawyer in the human-resources
group, Eric Sjoding, advised Costa in the Nov. 22 email to “review the policy
again and in the future anytime you may consider speaking about Amazon’s
business in a public forum.”
(Amazon founder and chief executive
Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Costa and Jamie Kowalski, an Amazon
software-development engineer, told The Post in a joint statement in October
that the company is contributing to climate change as its cloud-computing
business aids oil- and gas-company exploration. Costa also met with Amazon’s
human-resources department to discuss the matter in October.
“It was scary to be called into a
meeting like that, and then to be given a follow-up email saying that if I
continued to speak up, I could be fired,” Costa said via email, referring to
Amazon’s warnings to her. “But I spoke up because I’m terrified by the harm the
climate crisis is already causing, and I fear for my children’s future.”
Costa said she will not be silenced.
“It’s our moral responsibility to
speak up — regardless of Amazon’s attempt to censor us — especially when
climate poses such an unprecedented threat to humanity,” Costa wrote.
Kowalski acknowledged receiving a
similar letter from Sjoding but declined to comment on it.
A third worker, Emily Cunningham,
said that she was informed in a separate meeting that she had violated the
company’s policies after speaking out on social media and to news organizations
about Amazon’s climate impact.
Amazon’s external communications
policy “is not new and we believe is similar to other large companies,” company
spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said in a statement. In response to whether Amazon
was trying to stifle workers, Anderson said employees are “encouraged to work
within their teams,” including by “suggesting improvements to how we operate
through those internal channels.”
Tech workers have recently become more
outspoken about concerns over their employers’ policies. During a Sept. 20
protest, thousands of Amazon employees walked out and criticized the company’s
climate policies and practices. In November 2018, thousands of Google employees
walked off the job to protest of the company’s handling of sexual-harassment
claims. Workers at Google, Amazon and Microsoft have spoken out in criticism of
facial-recognition technology from their companies, fearing misuse by law
enforcement and other government agencies.
As a result, some of those companies
are attempting to crack down. Some former Google employees have alleged they
were recently fired in retaliation for their public criticism of the company’s
policies and their attempts to organize. Google said the firings were a result
of violations of its policies around accessing and sharing internal documents
and calendars and has denied they were retaliatory
On Sept. 5, a day after an employee climate
group emailed colleagues about the Sept. 20 walkout, Amazon updated its
communications policy to create “a more streamlined and user-friendly way to
request PR approval to participate in external activities,” according to a
notification on the company’s internal website viewed by The Post. The policy
requires a “business justification” for any communications and notes that
approval could take up to two weeks.
The earlier version of the policy, which
had not been routinely enforced with activist employees, required workers to
request approval via email from senior vice presidents to comment publicly. The
update requires permission from lower-level executives and can be sought via an
intranet page, a change Amazon’s Anderson said makes its easier for employees
to give speeches and grant media interviews.
“As with any company policy,
employees may receive a notification from our HR team if we learn of an
instance where a policy is not being followed,” Anderson said.
The day before the walkout, Bezos held a
news conference agreeing to measure and report Amazon’s emissions on a regular
basis and meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years early. Critics
said at the time that the commitments lack accountability and transparency.
Three weeks after, Amazon released a
policy statement outlining its positions on a variety of hot-button issues for
which it has faced criticism, including an acknowledgment that it would
continue to work with the energy industry.
“While our positions are carefully
considered and deeply held, there is much room for healthy debate and differing
opinions,” the company wrote at the time.
Costas and Kowalski’s initial comments to
The Post addressed that new policy statement.
All three employees are members of
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group that has called on the company to
commit to being carbon neutral by 2030, to end cloud-computing contracts that
help energy companies accelerate oil and gas extraction, and to stop funding
politicians and lobbyists who deny climate change.
Amazon also has a social-media
policy that allows workers to post missives as long as they do not disclose
confidential business information. Workers also are supposed to note that they
are expressing their own opinions, not the company’s. Anderson said that policy
is part of its overall communications rules, not separate from them.
Cunningham, a user-experience designer,
said she was informed in an October meeting with a human-resources executive
that she had violated the company’s recently updated policy. Cunningham
criticized Amazon’s environmental policy at the company’s shareholder meeting
in May, and on social media and in news reports she has condemned Amazon’s work
with oil and gas companies.
In an email, Cunningham wrote that
the human-resources meeting was frightening, adding that it also made her sad
and angry, given the threat of climate change.
“It was a clear attempt to silence
me and other workers who have been speaking out about the climate crisis,”
Cunningham said.
Costa wrote that she understands that she
cannot discuss confidential business information but that she believes she has
an obligation to speak out about the causes of climate change and how to
address them. Amazon’s efforts to silence employees’ criticism of its practices
are damaging morale, she said.
“I’ve had colleagues, many of them very
senior and tenured, say how disappointed they are — that this isn’t the company
they thought they were working for,” Costa wrote.
This story was originally
published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here.
Comments
Post a Comment