The walkout is on.
Amazon employee groups say they expect more than 1,900 workers around the world to participate in a planned protest of the company’s return-to-office mandate and climate-related impact.
The walkout is scheduled for noon PT on Wednesday in front of Amazon’s Spheres building in the heart of its Seattle HQ campus. More than 870 employees in Seattle are expected to show up; workers outside of Seattle and in remote roles are also encouraged to participate.
The groups said last week that the walkout would only happen if 1,000 employees pledged to do it.
“This is about Amazon going in the wrong direction, and losing trust,” Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and Amazon Remote Advocacy said in a statement posted online. “We want to stop Amazon from deepening its path into Day 2.”
They add: “We want what’s best for Amazon. Long-term thinking and employee voices are a significant component of the Day 1 culture that’s turned Amazon into such a successful company, and we’re trying to reignite it.”
“Day 1” is a reference to a mantra touted by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who stepped down as CEO in 2021 but remains chairman.
“The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly,” Bezos wrote in his 2016 letter to shareholders. “If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.”
Amazon mandated its return-to-office policy May 1, with employees required to be back in offices at least three days per week. Seattle political leaders lauded the move as a boost to a downtown struggling to return to pre-pandemic activity relative to other urban cores across the U.S.
But thousands of corporate and tech employees weren’t as thrilled, joining an internal Slack channel to protest the policy.
The move by CEO Andy Jassy and company leadership came after Amazon previously said in October 2021 that it was leaving back-to-office decisions up to individual team leaders. Amazon altered course when it announced the return-to-office plans in February of this year.
The walkout organizers say the new policy negatively impacts employees — including women, people of color, and workers with disabilities — who value autonomy in where they work.
The walkout also highlights frustrations with Amazon’s climate-related initiatives.
“From severely undercounting our footprint to disproportionately polluting communities of color, to increasing carbon emissions 40% since 2019, to killing clean energy legislation, it’s clear that leadership still sees climate impact as an inconvenience rather than a strategic focus,” the groups said.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice previously criticized the company’s efforts toward reducing its carbon footprint and organized a “virtual walkout” over firings and warehouse conditions in 2020.
In a statement to GeekWire last week about the walkout, a company spokesperson said “we respect our employees’ rights to express their opinions.”
The planned walkout comes on the heels of significant job cuts at Amazon, where 27,000 employees have been laid off over the past few months. Amazon in January announced an 18,000-person layoff, the largest in the company’s history. An additional 9,000 layoffs were announced in March.
Amazon employs more than 65,000 corporate workers in the Seattle region.
Update: Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser provided a new statement below:
“We continue to push hard on getting to net carbon zero by 2040, and we have over 400 companies who’ve joined us in our Climate Pledge. While we all would like to get there tomorrow, for companies like ours who consume a lot of power, and have very substantial transportation, packaging, and physical building assets, it’ll take time to accomplish. We remain on track to get to 100% renewable energy by 2025, and will continue investing substantially, inventing and collaborating both internally and externally to reach our goal.
We’re always listening and will continue to do so, but we’re happy with how the first month of having more people back in the office has been. There’s more energy, collaboration, and connections happening, and we’ve heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices. We understand that it’s going to take time to adjust back to being in the office more and there are a lot of teams at the company working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible for employees.”
Updated on Wednesday May 31 with latest participation number.
