Amazon Employees Plan To Walk Off The Job:As Tech Worker Tension Rises

 

San Francisco: On Monday, Amazon tech workers circulated messages via Slack and email. Where employee organizers call out colleagues to participate in a walkout on May 31, a week following Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting.

This has brought a climate of anxiety and agitation among tech workers as mass layoffs continue across the industry. Undoubtedly, a sense of unrest is constantly revolving throughout the tech world with top-notch faculty at Amazon, Google, and Meta announced widespread job cuts.

Workers all over are in big tension and have taken issue not only with the layoffs themselves but also with company treatment and lack of communication from leadership.

According to the sources, Meta, Amazon, and Disney, all have carried out massive layoffs, affecting thousands of workers in various divisions.

Amazon is the largest e-commerce company and was among the first to do over-hiring during a pandemic, with job cuts announced last year. Until now, Amazon has eliminated 9,000 jobs that began in November and extended till January.

However, in total more than 18,000 employees, and primarily affected staff members in its retail, devices, recruiting, and human resources groups.

A Los-Angeles based Amazon employee who plans to participate spoke on the condition of not leaking out his name and said that” Morale feels like it’s at an all-time low”.

In addition, “In meetings and one-on-ones with colleagues, there’s so much uncertainty and lack of clarity from leadership. It’s an unsettling time to work at Amazon”.

Moreover, the walkout which is expected to attract at least 1,000 participants from Seattle, is a part of a larger wave of unease that is escalating into agitation among Silicon Valley workers as hiring freezes follow mass layoffs amid an impending potential recession.

At Meta, morale has plummeted as higher authorities are constantly receiving big bonuses whereas, the company continues to lay off thousands of people. At Google, staffers are bracing themselves for further job eliminations.

Recent tech executives generally painted a more positive financial picture for the companies during a round of earnings calls. But now, their ability to affect change is diminished by their lack of job security. Employees at notoriously opulent firms are becoming more agitated.

Layoffs almost always establish a “sense of betrayal” among workers, stated Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara. That is the reason that workers are expressing their frustration and aggressiveness even in the current economic situation.

He also stated that “at many of these high-tech firms, there’s a certain sense of creating a new world, something better”.

In addition, he also stated that” when you have a particular sense of a grievance and righteousness, you can still have a worker or employee action, even in periods of recession or depression. Sometimes that’s transcended by a sense of moral outrage”.

Google did not give any response to a request for comment. Meta declined to comment on it. Lisa Levandowski, Amazon spokeswoman replied that “we respect our employees' rights to express their opinions”

“Amazon is full of smart people who want to solve problems . We are asking them to solve problems like figuring out what a more sustainable Amazon looks like”.

“Rather than engaging in this conversation, the Amazon leadership team is consistently breaking our trust”.

Amazon said its commitment to achieving carbon net zero by 2040 was in the works before the 2019 employee workout.

One of the employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that “I think there is so much frustration with the company on so many fronts, and it’s all stemming from the same place: Leadership is making unilateral decisions without the input of its workers”.

“And I believe that a lot of people are in a similar position where they are just done. They are fed up. They want to be heard”.