Big Tech has come under more scrutiny than ever in recent months—including from its own employees. But as workers from Silicon Valley’s biggest behemoths start speaking out against the practices of their employers, the companies are also starting to fight back. Just weeks after Google made headlines for allegedly retaliating against employees involved with union organizing, Amazon is now reportedly taking action against employees who have spoken out against its environmental practices and role in the climate crisis. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Amazon has warned at least two employees that they could be fired for making public comments criticizing the company’s environmental policies, which Amazon says violates the company’s new communications policy. The workers involved are members of Amazon’s internal employee group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which has called on Amazon to become carbon neutral by 2030; end Amazon Web Services contracts with oil and gas companies; and give zero funding to climate-denying lobbyists and politicians.
Per the Post, Amazon user experience designer Maren Costa and software development engineer Jamie Kowalski were sent emails by Amazon lawyers after criticizing the company’s policies in an October statement to the Post, which accused Amazon of wanting to “profit in businesses that are directly contributing to climate catastrophe.” (Costa was also warned about her infraction in an October meeting with Amazon’s human resources department.) In the email sent to Costa, which was reviewed by the Post, the employee was informed she violated the communications policy, and warned that future violations could “result in formal corrective action, up to and including termination of your employment with Amazon.” A third employee, Emily Cunningham, was also informed in a separate meeting that she had violated the company’s policies, after speaking out against Amazon’s climate practices on social media and to the media. “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 told the Post. “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.”
Amazon’s external communications policy requires employees to use an internal system to request P.R. approval to discuss the company publicly, and give a “business justification” for doing so. (The previous system, which the Post notes “had not been routinely enforced with activist employees,” instead required email approval from a senior vice president.) The system “is not new and we believe is similar to other large companies,” company spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said in a statement to the Post defending the policy. (In a separate statement to Recode, a company spokesperson said, “Everyone at Amazon is a builder and encouraged to work within their teams to innovate on behalf of our customers, which includes suggesting improvements to how we operate through those internal channels.”) But employees have criticized the policy, which they note was put in place just one day after Amazon Employees for Climate Justice announced its intention to participate in the Global Climate Strike. “This policy change has nothing to do with sharing confidential company information; this change was made to explicitly forbid employees from speaking out about publicly available information, such as Amazon’s partnerships with fossil fuel companies . . . or the funding of lobbyists & think tanks who publicly deny climate change and/or actively work to suppress climate change legislation,” the employee group wrote on Twitter Thursday.
Amazon has publicly emphasized its commitment to climate change in recent months, as CEO Jeff Bezos announced in September Amazon’s pledge to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement by 2040, 10 years ahead of schedule. But the company has still not acquiesced to its employees’ demands, and specifically refused the request to end its contracts with fossil fuel companies. As a result, employees remain determined to continue their fight despite Amazon’s warnings, with one employee involved with organizing efforts telling Recode the warnings “may quiet a few people down, but ultimately the folks that are most active are hard to intimidate.” “Amazon’s policy is not going to stop the momentum tech workers have built over the past year at Amazon,” Amazon data engineer Justin Campbell said in a statement released through Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. “The climate crisis is the greatest challenge we face and the only way we can find solutions is by protecting people’s right to speak freely and disrupting the status quo.”