The Sept. 20 protest had thousands of Amazon employees walking out while criticizing the company’s climate policies and practices.
In November 2018, the same thing happened with Google in November 2018 where thousands of employees walked off the job to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment claims.
Now it seems that employees of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are speaking out on facial-recognition technology from their companies, fearing misuse by law enforcement and other government agencies.
An article from The Washington Post on January 2nd, 2020 stated that “Amazon threatens to fire critics who are outspoken on its environmental policies.”
It also mentioned that at least two employees who publicly criticized the company’s environmental policies have been warned that they “could be fired” for “future violations of its communications policy.”
The communications policy that was updated in September 2019 now mentions that they require a “business justification” for any communications and indicates that are approved.
This policy now could potentially take up to two weeks.
The environmentalist group from Amazon wrote in an October 10 statement that “Amazon’s position is based on false premises and distracts from the fact that Amazon wants to profit in businesses that are directly contributing to climate catastrophe.”
These demands from Amazon’s environmentalists are steep now, considering what it used to be.
They demanded that Amazon “commit to being carbon neutral by 2030, to end cloud computing contracts that help energy companies accelerate oil and gas extraction, and to stop funding politicians and lobbyists who deny climate change.”
There has been an outcry from employees regarding an email that was allegedly sent to Costa, which warned of “formal corrective action, up to and including termination of your employment with Amazon” for future infractions.
In response to this warning from Costa she sent an email to The Post stating, “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.”
Although, she does not regret the actions that were made from citing, “It’s our moral responsibility to speak up — regardless of Amazon’s attempt to censor us — especially when climate poses such an unprecedented threat to humanity.”
Not only did Costa speak out about this issue, but Amazon’s UX designer Emily Cunningham was also warned from publicly criticizing Amazon on social media and unspecified news organizations regarding Amazon’s climate controversies.
Mrs. Cunningham was told in an October meeting that she had violated the company’s policy. “It was a clear attempt to silence me and other workers who have been speaking out about the climate crisis,” claimed Cunningham.
The Washington Post believes this has been an ongoing trend across Silicon Valley, where Big Tech companies struggle to balance both corporate pragmatism with their employees’ liberal politics.
