Several Amazon employees are risking their jobs, as they plan to openly criticize the e-commerce giant’s business practices. Various employees in the large e-commerce conglomerate are upset with the brand not taking enough efforts to reduce its impact on the world.
Employee organisers are asking fellow colleagues to either write their own comments or sign prewritten statements asking them if they approve or disapprove of Amazon’s business practices?-- specifically related to sustainability, immigration as well as working conditions at the warehouse.
As per the email, the activists are planning to post these comments, at least a hundred of them on Medium. Now Amazon’s current policies prevent employees to speak publicly or risk facing gruesome consequences. However, with a mass-expose, they’re trying to hope that the large numbers could soften the damage -- with the employees acting in unison.
When Recode asked for a comment regarding the same, Amazon spokesperson responded stating, “While all employees are welcome to engage constructively with any of the many teams inside Amazon that work on sustainability and other topics, we do enforce our external communications policy, and will not allow employees to publicly disparage or misrepresent the company or the hard work of their colleagues who are developing solutions to these hard problems.”
Another statement, when asked about their awareness for staging the aforementioned protest, the spokesperson responded, “We know our employees are passionate about climate change, we are too – we founded the Climate Pledge, committing to net zero carbon by 2040, which is ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement, and we plan to be using 100% renewable energy by 2030.”
Amazon hasn’t been the greenest company with its operations. It has a massive carbon footprint -- from his own logistics for shipping stuff across the globe, to the waste generated from shipments, to datacentres that run for days sucking power all-day-long, so much so that the company didn’t want details of its energy consumption and carbon emissions published.