Amazon employees gather for a rally during a walkout event at the corporate’s headquarters on May 31, 2023 in Seattle, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Amazon employees staged a walkout Wednesday in protest of the corporate’s recent return-to-office mandate, layoffs and its environmental record.
Roughly 2,000 employees worldwide walked off the job shortly after 3 p.m. EST, with about 1,000 of those employees gathering outside the Spheres, the huge glass domes that anchor Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, in response to worker groups behind the hassle. The walkout was organized partly by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an influential employee organization that has repeatedly pressed the e-retailer on its climate stance.
The group said employees are walking out to focus on a “lack of trust in company leadership’s decision making.” Amazon recently initiated the most important layoffs in its 29-year history, cutting 27,000 jobs across its cloud computing, promoting and retail divisions, amongst several others, since last fall. On May 1, the corporate ordered corporate employees to start out working from the office at the very least three days every week, largely bringing an end to the distant work arrangements some employees had settled into in the course of the coronavirus pandemic.
Employees gathered on a grassy lawn, surrounded by office towers and next to an airstream providing officegoers with free bananas, and held signs with messages like “Amazon strive harder” and “Earth’s best employer? Stop the PR and hearken to us.” One worker spoke about how distant work had allowed her to spend more time together with her family, while coworkers told her it enabled them to look after newborn children and relatives with special needs.
“Today looks prefer it is perhaps the beginning of a latest chapter in Amazon’s history, when tech employees coming out of the pandemic stood up and said we still need a say on this company and the direction of this company,” said Eliza Pan, a cofounder of AECJ and a former program manager at Amazon. “We still need a say within the necessary decisions that affect all of our lives, and tech employees are going to arise for ourselves, for one another, for our families, the communities where Amazon operates and for all times on planet Earth.”
Amazon estimated that about 300 employees participated within the walkout.
Amazon employees hold signs during a walkout event at the corporate’s headquarters on May 31, 2023 in Seattle, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Amazon employees are walking off the job at a precarious time contained in the company. Amazon just wrapped up its worker cuts, and it continues to reckon with the rough economy and slowing retail sales, leaving staffers on the sting that further layoffs could still be in store.
Employees had urged Amazon leadership to drop the return-to-office mandate and crafted a petition, addressed to CEO Andy Jassy and the S-team, a tight-knit group of senior executives from just about all areas of Amazon’s business. Staffers said the policy “runs contrary” to Amazon’s positions on diversity and inclusion, inexpensive housing, sustainability, and give attention to being the “Earth’s Best Employer.”
The backlash to the return-to-office mandate spilled over into an internal Slack channel, and employees created a gaggle called Distant Advocacy to precise their concerns.
Amazon employees who moved in the course of the pandemic or were hired for a distant role have expressed concern about how the return-to-office policy will affect them, CNBC previously reported. Amazon’s head count ballooned over the past three years, and it hired more employees outside of its key tech hubs akin to Seattle, Latest York and Northern California because it embraced a more distributed workforce.
The corporate had previously said it would depart it as much as individual managers to come to a decision what working arrangements worked best for his or her teams.
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in a press release that the corporate has up to now been pleased with the outcomes of its return-to-office push.
“There’s more energy, collaboration, and connections happening, and we have heard this from numerous employees and the companies that surround our offices,” Glasser added. “We understand that it is going to take time to regulate back to being within the office more and there are numerous teams at the corporate working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible for workers.”
Amazon says it has 65,000 corporate and tech employees within the Puget Sound region and roughly 350,000 corporate and tech employees worldwide.
Employees are also using the walkout to attract attention to concerns that Amazon is not meeting its climate commitments. They pointed to Amazon’s most up-to-date sustainability report, which showed its carbon emissions jumped 40% in 2021 from 2019, the 12 months it unveiled its “Climate Pledge” plan. Staffers also highlighted a report last 12 months by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting that found the corporate undercounts its carbon footprint by only counting product carbon emissions from using Amazon-branded goods, and never those it buys from manufacturers and sells on to the patron.
Amazon disputed the Reveal report and said the main points around the corporate’s Scope 3 reporting were inaccurate. Amazon follows guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard in determining its Scope 3 emissions, or emissions generated from an organization’s supply chain, Glasser said.
Moreover, Amazon recently eliminated considered one of its climate goals, called Shipment Zero, wherein the corporate pledged to make half of all its shipments carbon neutral by 2030. Amazon said it will give attention to its broader Climate Pledge, which incorporates a provision to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, a decade later than its original Shipment Zero commitment.
“Our goal is to vary Amazon’s cost/profit evaluation on making harmful, unilateral decisions which are having an outsized impact on people of color, women, LGBTQ people, individuals with disabilities, and other vulnerable people,” the group said.
Glasser said Amazon continues to “push hard” to be net carbon zero across its business by 2040. The corporate stays on the right track to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2025, he added.
“While all of us would love to get there tomorrow, for firms like ours who eat numerous power, and have very substantial transportation, packaging, and physical constructing assets, it’ll take time to perform,” Glasser said.
WATCH: Amazon employees protest about sudden return-to-office policy