Amazon Accused of Retaliating Over Data Center Testimony
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- Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani, and Liesl Wigand filed a legal complaint Thursday with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, citing a Seattle law barring employment discrimination over political speech and alleging Amazon engaged in prohibited employment discrimination.
- Amazon's "Employee Relations" HR called all three engineers into impromptu meetings on June 10th — one week after the hearings and one day after the City Council passed a one-year moratorium on large-scale data centers — and told them the company was investigating, with disciplinary action up to termination possible.
- Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan said the company is "investigating whether there was a violation of our policies" and disputed the characterization that Amazon had plans to fire the employees, adding "we don't tolerate retaliatory behavior."
- Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) published an open letter last year signed by more than 1,000 Amazon employees urging 100% additional local renewable energy for data centers; five AECJ members, including the three engineers, testified at the June hearings.
- Four unknown companies submitted proposals for five large-scale data centers in Seattle two months before the moratorium vote, which combined would demand electricity equal to one-third of Seattle's average daily use and 10 times more power than the city's existing data centers.
- Schloesser described a "culture of fear" at Amazon — citing layoffs, performance improvement plans, stack ranking, and "unregretted attrition quotas" — that he said discourages employees from speaking out even on legally protected speech.
Why it matters: The case tests Seattle's rare municipal law barring employment discrimination over political speech, which AECJ's attorney noted exists in "one of just a few jurisdictions in the country." For the three named engineers, the stakes are immediate employment status while Amazon's internal investigation proceeds. For Amazon, a formal civil rights investigation arrives just as its home city passed a one-year data center moratorium and nationwide data center backlash is intensifying.
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