Jan. 03, 2020 10:08AM EST Climate
Amazon employees who speak out about the climate crisis say they have been threatened with firing.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) said Thursday that the company’s legal and HR teams had questioned some of their members about public statements they had made urging Amazon to take climate action. Some also received emails saying they would be fired if they continued to speak up.
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[Read about Amazon employees who want the company to act on climate.]
“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,” user experience principal designer Maren Costa, one of the targeted employees, told The Guardian. “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. Any policy that says I can’t talk about something that is a threat to my children – all children – is a problem for me.”
Costa said she was one of four employees who had been questioned and one of two threatened with firing.
Costa had spoken to The Washington Post in October about how Amazon’s cloud computing helps with oil and gas exploration, the paper reported. She was called into a meeting to discuss her comments that month, and then received an email saying she had violated the company’s external communications policy and that any future violation could “result in formal corrective action, up to and including termination of your employment with Amazon,” according to The Washington Post.
Jamie Kowalski, who also spoke to The Washington Post with Costa in October, received a similar message. Employee Emily Cunningham was separately told she had violated Amazon policies by speaking to reporters and on social media.
AECJ said that Amazon had updated its communications policy one day after the group announced it would participate in the Global Climate Strike Sept. 20, 2019. The updated policy requires employees to get prior approval before speaking publicly about the company while identified as an employee.
“Amazon’s newly updated communications policy is having a chilling effect on workers who have the backbone to speak out and challenge Amazon to do better,” software engineer Victoria Liang said in a statement reported by The Guardian. “This policy is aimed at silencing discussion around publicly available information. It has nothing to do with protecting confidential data, which is covered by a completely different set of policies” […]
Continued at Ecowatch
The Most Revolutionary Act 
If “people” exercised even an iota of intelligence they would all boycott Amazon. Anything I see advertised or sold on Amazon I automatically refuse to consider. I won’t buy WordPress blogger writers’ books if the are sold on Amazon. It is always a matter of personal choice and when it no longer is, then we have entered into a version of the “1984” novel’s dystopian world.
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Same here, Sha’Tara. I also try to keep very close track of all the competitors Amazon has bought out and avoid them as well. I used to buy books from Book Depository and Abe Books until I found Amazon had bought them. People are much better off going to their local independent bookstores and having them order the books – while they still can.
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