Amazon: see the writing on the wall?
Last April, a group of Amazon employees signed an open letter to Jeff Bezos and the Amazon board of directors expressly asking the company to take action in the fight against the climate emergency. In a very short time, at a company traditionally characterized by extreme discretion, the number of signatories of the letter exceeded eight thousand people prepared to go on record as saying that the company must do much more than greenwashing.
Despite the protests, the open letter and the dramatic requests made at the annual shareholders meeting a month later, the company’s shareholders rejected all calls for action and showed zero sensitivity toward the issue, essentially calling for an end to this environmental nonsense and to get on with making more money.
One thing is to treat your warehouse employees deplorably, forcing them to supplement their meager salaries with welfare in the knowledge that they have no alternative and will soon be replaced with robots anyway, but it is very different is to ignore the demands of employees who can easily find work anywhere else.
Now, hundreds of Amazon employees say they will actively participate in the Global Climate Strike on September 20, with many of them specifically asking for vacation time to do so, in protest at the company’s refusal to do anything about its prodigiously deep carbon…
