Amazon Employees Walkout Over Company’s Climate Impact, Return-To-Office Policy

On a Wednesday afternoon at its Seattle headquarters, Amazon employees walked off their job protesting a flexible remote work policy and to renew its commitments to reduce carbon emissions to zero.

Corporate Workout

Hundreds of Amazon employees walked out as a protest on Wednesday to demand the company regarding its return-to-office policy and its decision that impacts the climate heavily. Engadget reported that the walkout is a collaboration between Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and the group that opposes Amazon's mandated RTO policy.

Organizers of the walkout estimated about 1,000 employees participated in Seattle, and more than 2,000 employees pledged to participate globally. Amazon employed a corporate workforce that totals more than 350,000 employees. While 65,000 of those are based near Seattle, only 300 workers participated in the walkout event.

The protest came a week after Amazon's annual shareholder meeting and a month after the RTO policy took effect. Team leaders of the company were previously allowed to determine how the employees charged their work.

Protesting Over RTO Policy, Climate Impacts

The event featured speakers who vented their frustrations with the company's policy to have workers return to its office for at least three days a week. Associated Press News reported that employees argued that remote work that started during the COVID pandemic bought them precious hours at home with their family, which saved them from hours of a daily commute.

Quality Assurance Engineer Church Hundley said that working from home allowed him to live a better and healthier life. "I'm out here because I refuse to just sit idly by while mandates are dictated from above down that don't make sense and hurt the planet, hurt families and individual lives, and just to get us into a seat at the office for their tax incentives," he stated

Additionally, remote work allowed more families to become one-car households, which an employee connected to the company's climate goals. This will reflect some of the groups' complaints against Amazon for failing to meet its own goals in its climate promise of reaching zero emissions by 2040.

Amazon's Response

Amazon released a statement and said that it supported workers expressing openings. Spokesperson Bard Glasser revealed that the company is still pushing to reach its goal. He said, "We remain on track to get to 100 percent renewable energy by 2025 and will continue investing substantially, inventing, and collaborating both internally and externally to reach our goal."

A similar scenario happened in 2019 when Amazon Employees for Climate Justice organized a similar action, demanding to release the company's carbon emissions data. Amazon then commits to goals regarding renewable energy and net carbon emissions known as Climate Pledge.

But Amazon was believed by its employees to be straying from those commitments as The Washington Post reported that the company removed language from its website that promised to get carbon emissions for half of its shipments to net zero by 2030.