Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) has called for the company's workers to call in sick on Friday 24 April and live-stream their walkout to protest Amazon's recent actions.
"We are angry that Amazon tried to censor us by deleting our email invitation from thousands of peoples' inboxes, the invitation in a Google doc posted on 16 April said. We invite you to take a sick day and join us on Friday, April 24 for a day-long livestream."
The authors, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, who also head the AECJ, say that on 10 April they invited fellow employees "internally" to the meeting to hear about conditions in warehouses and also about the "intersections between the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic" from an expert.
Amazon reportedly sent letters to Cunningham and Costa saying they violated the company's external communications policy, which prohibits employees from publicly commenting on Amazon's internal affairs without its approval.
Amazon explained to the Washington Post that every employee had the right "to criticise the employer's working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies. We terminated these employees for repeatedly violating internal policies".
Previously, the AECJ has repeatedly slammed Amazon's policies towards climate change and called for more action from the company.
