Amazon employees gather for a rally during a strike at the corporate’s headquarters on May 31, 2023 in Seattle, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images | News Getty’s paintings
Amazon employees staged a strike on Wednesday in protest of the corporate’s recent return to office mandate, layoffs and its environmental record.
About 2,000 employees world wide left their jobs shortly after 3:00 p.m. EST, and about 1,000 of them gathered outside the Spheres, the huge glass domes that anchor Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, by worker groups behind the hassle. The strike was organized in part by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an influential labor organization that has repeatedly pressured the web retailer for its climate stance.
The group said the employees were walking out to highlight a “lack of confidence in decision-making by company management”. Amazon recently initiated the most important layoffs in its 29-year history, cutting 27,000 jobs in cloud computing, promoting and retail, amongst others, since last fall. On May 1, the corporate mandated corporate employees to start working from the office for at the very least three days per week, largely ending the distant work some employees had grow to be accustomed to throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Employees gathered on a grassy lawn, surrounded by high-rise office towers and next to an air stream that provided office employees with free bananas, and held up banners with messages corresponding to “Amazon tries harder” and “Best Employer on Earth? Stop PR and listen to us.” One employee shared how working remotely allowed her to spend more time together with her family, while co-workers told her it enabled them to take care of newborn children and relatives with special needs.
“Today looks prefer it could possibly be the start of a recent chapter in Amazon’s history as tech employees recovering from the pandemic stood up and said we still want to have a say in this company and the direction this company goes,” said Eliza Pan , co-founder of AECJ and former program manager at Amazon. “We still want to have a say in essential decisions that affect our lives, and tech employees will get up for themselves, one another, our families, the communities where Amazon operates, and life on planet Earth.”
Amazon estimated that about 300 employees took part in the strike.
Amazon employees hold banners during a strike at the corporate’s headquarters on May 31, 2023 in Seattle, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images | News Getty’s paintings
Amazon employees leave their jobs at an uncertain time contained in the company. Amazon has just accomplished job cuts and continues to reckon with a difficult economic situation and a slowdown in retail sales, leaving employees on the verge that more layoffs could still follow.
Employees called on Amazon’s management to drop their mandate to return to office and created a petition addressed to CEO Andy Jassy and Team S, a close-knit group of senior executives from nearly all areas of Amazon’s business. Employees said the policy “contravenes” Amazon’s stance on diversity and inclusion, reasonably priced housing, sustainability and a deal with being “one of the best employer on earth”.
The response to the return-to-office order spilled onto an internal Slack channel, with employees forming a bunch called Distant Advocacy to voice their concerns.
Amazon employees who moved throughout the pandemic or were hired remotely have expressed concern about how the return-to-office policy will affect them, CNBC previously reported. Amazon’s workforce has grown over the past three years and has hired more employees outside of its key tech hubs like Seattle, Recent York and Northern California because it embraced a more dispersed workforce.
The corporate previously said it might leave it up to individual managers to resolve what working conditions could be best for his or her teams.
Amazon spokesman Brad Glasser said in an announcement that the corporate is joyful with the outcomes of its return to office to this point.
“There’s more energy, collaboration and connection, and we have heard that from many employees and businesses surrounding our offices,” added Glasser. “We understand that it’ll take a while to adjust to being in the office more often, and lots of teams across the corporate are working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible for employees.”
Amazon says it has 65,000 corporate and technical employees in the Puget Sound region and roughly 350,000 corporate and technical employees worldwide.
Employees are also using the strike to draw attention to concerns that Amazon is failing to meet its climate commitments. They pointed to Amazon’s latest sustainability report, which showed its carbon emissions increased by 40% in 2021 over 2019, where the corporate unveiled its “Climate Commitment” plan. Employees were also highlighted last 12 months’s report by Reveal of The Center for Investigative Reporting, who said the corporate was underestimating its carbon footprint by only counting carbon emissions from products that come from using Amazon-branded goods, not those it buys from manufacturers and sells directly to the buyer.
Amazon disputed Reveal’s report and said the small print of the corporate’s scope 3 reporting were inaccurate. Amazon follows the directions from Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard when determining Scope 3 emissions, or emissions generated from an organization’s supply chain, said Glasser.
Plus Amazon recently eliminated one of its climate goals, called Shipment Zero, where the corporate committed to making half of all shipments carbon neutral by 2030. Amazon he said would deal with its broader Climate Commitment, which incorporates a pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, a decade later than the unique zero-shipping commitment.
“Our goal is to change Amazon’s cost-benefit evaluation of making harmful, one-sided decisions which have a big 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 achieve net-zero carbon emissions across all of its operations by 2040. The corporate is on course to reach 100% renewable energy by 2025, he added.
“While we would all like to get there tomorrow, for firms like ours that use rather a lot of energy and have very large transportation, packaging and physical constructing assets, it’ll take time to get there,” Glasser said.
TO WATCH: Amazon employees protest against the policy of abrupt return to work
![Amazon employees protest against the policy of abrupt return to work](https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/107198318-16770918641677091862-28303266478-1080pnbcnews.jpg?v=1677092637&w=750&h=422&vtcrop=y)