“We have conducted a thorough investigation, after an internal petition accused the corporation of having an underlying culture of pervasive discrimination, bullying, and bigotry towards women and under-represented groups,” Amazon stated.
The Washington Post obtained a copy of the petition, which states that Amazon’s mechanisms for investigating discrimination claims are not fair, objective, or transparent.
Cindy Warner, a gay executive in Amazon Web Services’ professional services company, filed a lawsuit alleging that a manager made homophobic comments and has fired in retaliation. It also refers to a LinkedIn article written by Laudon Williams, a former employee of the organization, last summer. He stated that he quit because of worries about gender and sexual orientation discrimination.
The new allegations focus
Last week, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky wrote the petition’s authors to say that the business had engaged an outside firm to look into the allegations and that he would evaluate the findings. However, he did not commit to a timeline. Selipsky responded, “I share your desire for making our workplace inclusive and free of bias and unfair treatment”. Jaci Anderson, an Amazon spokesman, declined to speak further.
The initiative is the latest in a series of uprisings by Amazon employees who aren’t scared to speak up against the company’s leadership. Previously, workers pressured the corporation to address climate change and improve hazardous warehouse working conditions. The new charges centre on AWS’s professional services group, known as ProServe, assists businesses in adopting the company’s cloud-computing technology.
The petition requests an impartial investigation into staff concerns about a non-inclusive culture. Additionally they demand the formation of an employee council to work with the company.
Problematic hiring system
Amazon isn’t the only tech behemoth facing discrimination allegations. A problematic hiring system describes by current and former Black Facebook employees. In response, the corporation stated that it is committed to achieving racial equity in the workplace and recruiting. A former Google recruiter accused the firm of discriminating against students from historically Black schools and institutions during the interview and recruiting process. Google has stated that it is making strenuous efforts to hire more Black and other underrepresented individuals.
Employees at IT businesses are increasingly vocal about the flaws they see in their workplaces. Workers at Google have campaigned to create a union. They are not creating it for collective bargaining rights, but rather to have a say in the company’s policy.
More than 350 Amazon employees broke the business’s communications policy a year and a half ago. They publicly criticized the firm in a Medium post as a show of support for colleagues who threatened with termination for openly criticizing the company’s climate practices. After two of those workers publicly blasted Amazon’s warehousing conditions, the company dismissed them three months later.
During the pandemic, Amazon warehouse workers staged protests outside corporate sites in New York, Michigan, and Illinois. Their aim was to draw attention to unsafe working conditions. Amazon temporarily increased wages. The business expanded efforts to provide workers with face masks and other safety equipment. They pledged to implement new workplace rules to isolate employees socially.
Despite this, Bezos admitted in April that Amazon must do a better job for our employees. In his annual shareholder letter, Bezos stated that one of his goals in his new career is to make the company Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.
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