Two Amazon employees say the company threatened to fire them for speaking out on climate change. The Washington Post reported their accounts, and Engadget carried them on 2 January 2020.
Maren Costa and Jamie Kowalski told the Post in October that Amazon adds to climate change by backing oil and gas exploration through its cloud-computing business. Afterward, both say, they were called into meetings with human resources and accused of breaking the company’s external communications policy.
Costa then received an email from a company lawyer. Any future violation, it said, could “result in formal corrective action, up to and including termination of your employment with Amazon.” Kowalski says she got a similar message.
Amazon’s statement
An Amazon spokesperson gave Engadget a statement that played down the matter. “Our policy regarding external communications is not new and we believe is similar to other large companies,” it read.
The company said it had recently changed the policy and its approval process to make it easier for staff to give speeches, do media interviews and use the company logo. “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.”
The Post noted that Amazon’s rules let employees speak on social media provided they do not disclose confidential business information.
A wider pattern
Engadget placed the episode in a growing trend of tech workers criticising their employers over environmental policy, workplace diversity, sexual misconduct, human rights and what it called “retaliation culture.”
It also pointed to Google. The National Labor Relations Board recently told Google to remind staff that they can speak freely about workplace issues, after employees alleged they were fired for union organizing. Google denies the claim.
