An internal petition signed by 640 Amazon tech and corporate employees is asking the company to raise its emissions goals and address the disproportionate environmental harms its logistics empire leaves on Black, Latino, Indigenous and immigrant neighborhoods where its warehouses are often concentrated.
The petition was organized by the influential employee group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, many of whose members receive stock with their positions, after Amazon successfully appealed to the Securities and Exchange Commission to bar a proposal from the group from being included in the company’s May 26 shareholder meeting. Amazon is the second largest employer in the country, with over 1 million workers, including Whole Foods employees and its vast fulfillment and delivery operations.
“As employees, we are alarmed that Amazon’s pollution is disproportionately concentrated in communities of color,” the petition that NBC News obtained reads. “We want to be proud of where we work. A company that lives up to its statements about racial equity and closes the racial equity gaps in its operations is a critical part of that.”
The group is also asking Amazon to offer detailed research about how its logistics and delivery operations pose disproportionate environmental and health hazards to communities of color, and prioritize those communities in its emissions reduction strategy. Amazon is currently committed to neutralizing its carbon emissions by 2040, but the group is asking the company to raise its goal to zero emissions by 2030, the year by when climate science estimates have determined global warming could lead to the irreversible loss of fragile ecosystems.
“We are committed to finding innovative solutions to reduce emissions and are transforming our transportation network with investments that help us deliver packages more sustainably to support the communities where we operate,” Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson, said. “As part of this work, we co-founded the Climate Pledge – a commitment to be net-zero carbon across our business operations 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.”
The Amazon employee climate group submitted its shareholder proposal because these employees were awarded stock as part of their compensation. Amazon employees first used their stock to present their concerns about the company’s climate impact to their fellow shareholders in 2019. While it didn’t pass, it was the first time workers in the technology industry used their position as owners of company stock to urge their employer to change its business practices.
Dangerous air
Climate change advocates and policymakers have raised concerns about the pollution created by the thousands of diesel trucks, airplanes and vans used nationwide to transport Amazon orders through the company’s vast network of warehouses in order to fulfill its two-day delivery promise. About 80 percent of those warehouses are located in ZIP codes with higher populations of Black, Latino and Indigenous people compared to neighboring ZIP codes in the same metropolitan areas, according to the Amazon employee group’s research with data collected by the logistics consulting firm MWPVL International.
As online shopping increased with the rise of the coronavirus pandemic, communities such as Southern California’s Inland Empire have borne the brunt of the environmental impact from increased pollution, according to a report published last month by the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice. The group found that the increase in warehouses in the area correlates with an overall rise in poor air quality and subsequent health problems, including asthma, bronchitis and cancer, that hit communities of color the hardest, according to the report. Amazon is the largest employer in the region with 19 facilities.
Yet, the company is expanding its operations in the Inland Empire with an enormous logistics hub at the San Bernardino airport. The 700,000-square-foot facility is expected to bring 26 additional flights and 500 truck trips per day, which an environmental assessment by the airport authority found will collectively emit 1 ton of air pollution daily. Though the assessment ultimately found that the airport hub would meet federal requirements, then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Federal Aviation Administration and the local airport authority last year alleging the project is unlawful and will cause significant harm to the air quality of local communities. The city of San Bernardino is 65 percent Latino, according to the census.
Glasser, the Amazon spokesperson, said the company is installing 10 solar rooftops in the Inland Empire and is investing in large-scale renewable energy projects to move its operations to 100 percent renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of the company’s goals.
The 640 Amazon workers who signed the petition are also asking the company to deploy its electric vehicles in areas most affected by the pollution created by its delivery operations. “An electric delivery truck in a Seattle suburb doesn’t help a kid developing asthma living and going to school near a major shipping center, like in the Inland Empire,” Selene Xenia, an engineering manager at Amazon who is part of the employee climate group, said in an interview.
Some of Amazon’s new electric vehicles are scheduled to be tested in Los Angeles for the first time this year.
Stock options
The Amazon employee climate group helped usher a wave of climate activism at some of the country’s most recognizable technology companies. Thousands of tech workers at companies such as Google, Twitter and Microsoft joined Amazon employees in walking out of their offices in 2019 to press their own employers to do more to tackle climate change.
Shareholder proposals related to climate change began proliferating in the United States in 2014, according to Institutional Shareholder Services, an international corporate governance and investor advisory firm. Just last year, shareholders passed five climate-related proposals at companies such as DollarTree, J.B. Hunt Transport, Phillips 66 and Chevron.
Maximilian Horster, managing director and head of climate solutions with Institutional Shareholder Services, said that all companies need to make an environmental agenda a bigger priority.
“When you look at the magnitude of climate change, 10 or so companies adopting a resolution is not enough,” he said. “Shareholder resolutions are part of the solution. But they are not the only one because there are only so many resolutions out there.”
Still, Amazon employee climate activism has caught the attention of company executives. Tim Bray, a former vice president at Amazon who resigned last year citing a “culture of toxicity,” signed onto a petition from the group in 2019 calling on the company to reduce its carbon footprint and cut its ties to the oil and gas industry. Amazon also fired two of the employee climate group’s core organizers last year, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, citing violations of company policy that prohibits employees from commenting publicly on its business. The National Labor Relations Board determined last month that their firings were illegal.
Amazon says it disagrees with the labor board’s ruling. “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which are lawful,” Glasser, the Amazon spokesperson, said.
A day before the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice’s organized walkout in 2019, CEO Jeff Bezos announced plans to deploy a fleet of electric vans by 2024 and the company’s goal of going carbon neutral by 2040. Employees still walked out, since their demands called for stronger actions from Amazon. The company denies its climate pledge was made in response to the employee demands.
“I believe that tech workers have a responsibility to speak up about these issues and push their employer,” Xenia, the Amazon employee, said. “Amazon would not exist without its employees. We are its greatest asset.”
“It is not always easy to get leadership to respond or acknowledge quickly. But the more we speak up the more it is clear that we are heard and things do change.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
