Earlier this month, five current Amazon employees publicly urged Seattle City Council to regulate data centers. It was an unprecedented act of advocacy by tech workers, and now, three of the staffers say they are now under internal investigation for what they understand to be allegedly representing themselves as spokespeople for the company without prior approval. “It’s a totally ridiculous claim,” says one of the affected employees, Patrick Schloesser. “It’s patently absurd.”
The three software engineers, who work in different divisions of Amazon and all live in Seattle, believe they are being unfairly targeted for expressing their political beliefs. They filed a joint complaint on Thursday to Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights, according to the employees and a filing seen by WIRED. They accused Amazon of illegally attempting to intimidate and retaliate against them for expressing their personal opinion outside of work about the need to regulate the environmental and social impacts of data centers.
“Seattle is one of just a few jurisdictions in the country that prohibits private employers from discriminating against their employees based on the political beliefs they hold and the organizations they belong to,” says Abby Lawlor, an attorney at Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt who is advising the employees. “Here, we have legal tools to fight back and ensure that tech workers can be full democratic participants in these important local discussions. We hope the city of Seattle will do its part to ensure that this vital Seattle law is enforced.”
Amazon and the Seattle civil rights office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, previously told WIRED that the company respects employees’ right to voice their opinions and that it tries to be a responsible steward in the communities where it operates.
The Amazon employees took to the city lectern to advocate for various regulations that Seattle is considering imposing on data centers. Amazon doesn’t have a current or proposed data center in the city, but several other companies have put forth plans for new projects.
The employees who say they are under investigation—Darius Irani, Liesel Wigand, and Schloesser—tell WIRED they were each separately called into virtual meetings with an Amazon employee relations staffer last Wednesday. They were told an investigation may take one to two weeks and have received no updates so far, besides being directed to use a speaker registration form that they don’t feel applies to the personal comments they made. Schloesser recalls being told the probe could lead to being fired.
The three workers contend Amazon has a pattern of trying both to silence collective action by workers, including at its warehouses, and dodging public criticism of data centers by using confidentiality agreements and other tactics to shield the projects from some scrutiny. The affected workers say they have received numerous messages of support from colleagues and no internal criticism, aside from in the meetings with HR.
In remarks during public comment periods at three city meetings this month, the workers identified themselves as members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a collective of thousands of current and former workers at the tech giant that has long advocated for the company to better address its role in contributing to climate change.
The employees did not say they were speaking on behalf of the company, which to their knowledge didn’t make any formal comment about the data center measure at issue. Two other Amazon workers who spoke at later city council meetings say they have not received notice that they are under investigation.
Schloesser, who has been at Amazon for about six years, and Irani, who has more than five years at the company, say they felt compelled to join the growing nationwide movement against unfettered data center construction for their own reasons and believe no reasonable person could have interpreted their remarks as representing Amazon.
