More than 800 Amazon employees are calling on the company to step up its response to climate change through foreign aid, a sign that insider activism lives on at tech companies despite layoffs and a slowing economy. .
Employees say the aid is a way for Amazon to take more responsibility for its role in producing the greenhouse emissions that cause climate change.
In a petition posted on an internal system, workers are asking Amazon to contribute to «reparations» for Pakistan — which suffered devastating floods last summer and fall — by matching employee donations with relief efforts, according to screenshots. screen provided to NBC News. They also want the company to match employee donations on future weather-related disasters.
«Amazon’s success and scale come with broad responsibility,» the petition says. “As Amazonians, we are proud to uphold our leadership principles, and in that spirit, we owe it to our workforce, our customers, and the planet we live on to mitigate the harm our operations cause.”
The petition it was started by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of workers who have championed the company on climate issues for years. Scientists have said that the floods that killed more than 1,700 people and displaced millions in Pakistan were much more likely to occur because of climate change.
Amazon created a disaster relief portal in 2017 that allows employees and the company to work together to send supplies to areas affected by climate change and other disasters, and has donated $200,000 to relief organizations in Pakistan since the flooding, according to spokesman Patrick Malone.
The company did not comment directly on the request. Malone said in a statement that “Amazon has responded to more than 100 events around the world and has donated more than $20 million of goods, funds and other services to nonprofit organizations operating on the ground.”
Following previous employee actions around climate change, the company committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Despite the promise, emissions rise
But the workers noted in their petition that the company’s most recent disclosures showed its carbon emissions increased 40 percent in 2021 from 2019the year the company announced its climate commitment.
The petition is part of a growing global movement demanding that rich countries and corporations acknowledge their contributions to the climate crisis and the disproportionate effects that climate change has caused in areas of the world. that produce fewer emissions.
And it’s drawing in some Amazon workers who weren’t previously involved in workplace activism. The effort was sparked in part by the group’s Pakistani employees whose families back home were affected by the flooding. They say the company has an obligation to do more, given its role in climate emissions and the population of Pakistani workers it employs in the United States, many of whom are on H1B visas.
A Pakistani employee on the east coast said she thought long and hard about getting involved out of concern for her job in an uncertain economic climate. Amazon recently announced the layoff of some 18,000 workers, joining other tech luminaries like Meta, Salesforce and Lyft in downsizing. Ultimately, he decided the modest action was worth the risk, although he requested that his name not be used for fear of retaliation for publicly criticizing the company.
“Amazon is one of the largest logistics companies and it uses tons of fossil fuels,” the worker said. “He hasn’t been proactive enough. Amazon has a responsibility, just like all the big corporations in the United States and Europe.
a controversial story
Amazon has confronted insider activism on climate change before, sometimes aggressively.
The company fired two of the founders of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, after the group hosted a virtual event for the company’s technology employees to talk to workers at its warehouse about safety issues. related to covid in early 2020. Tim Bray, a noted engineer and vice president of the company, resign in protest of those layoffsas well as that of the organizer Chris Smalls.
Previously, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice had helped organize letter-writing campaigns, protests and a walkout to pressure the company on climate issues, demanding that Amazon go zero emissions by 2030, prevent its services division in the cloud do business with the oil and gas industry, and cease donations to climate change denying politicians. A letter received 8,700 signatures of Amazon employees.
the NLRB found merit in worker complaints who were fired in retaliation, and Amazon finally reached an out-of-court agreement with the employees.
“It definitely had an effect on people,” said Eliza Pan, a former program manager for the company who left in 2019 to work on climate change issues but is still involved with Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. «The effect was to make people more cautious and careful, but it didn’t completely scare them away.»
Amazon increased its work on climate change, post a climate pledge on the eve of a 2019 employee strike that promised to be net zero by 2040.
Those efforts include transitioning part of its fleet from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric and pledging $100 million for reforestation funds. Since then, more than 350 companies have adhered to the commitment.
Tensie Whelan, director of the Center for Sustainable Business at New York University’s business school, said this type of activism will continue to emerge in companies as millennials and Generation Z continue to constitute a larger sector of the force. labor.
«We’re not asking Amazon to do anything super extreme,» said an Amazon developer in Seattle who also spoke to NBC News on the condition that his name not be used for fear of retaliation for going public. «What we’re asking them to do first is something we’re willing to do.»