Amazon illegally retaliated against three of its employees for publicly testifying that Seattle should regulate data centers, according to a complaint filed on Thursday with the city’s Office for Civil Rights.
The complaint was filed on the workers’ behalf by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an independent group of corporate employees at Amazon that since 2018 has organized around climate issues. It said the company started investigations and told the employees that they could face discipline, in one case up to potential termination, in an act of intimidation that violated the city’s civil rights protections against discrimination for political beliefs.
Five Amazon tech workers affiliated with Amazon Employees for Climate Justice testified at several different hearings before the Seattle City Council and two of its committees. Their testimony in the company’s hometown drew national attention, and it put the tech giant in the awkward position of responding to public criticism of data centers and artificial intelligence from its own employees.
Patrick Schloesser, who has worked as a software engineer at Amazon Web Services since 2020, said in an interview with The New York Times that Amazon told him he was under investigation last week, when he was called into a meeting with no notice. He had testified at two City Council hearings in early June.
“I had this rising sense of anger that Amazon is attempting to infringe on my rights to speak out politically in my city,” he said. “If we allow corporations to decide which speech is or is not allowed, that absolutely hurts democracy.”
Amazon said that, similar to many companies, it had policies against employees speaking as representatives of the company without approval.
“As we looked more closely at how these employees represented themselves, and how their comments were received by others, it became clear that they may have been speaking in their capacity as Amazonians and not as private citizens,” Margaret Callahan, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement.
She said that the company does not allow retaliatory behavior and that when the investigation is concluded, Amazon “may or may not take action based on what we find.” She said the company did not have plans to terminate the employees.
Data center construction faces significant pushback around the country as the tech industry races to build enough capacity to serve the demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Seattle is among the communities considering whether to limit that growth. The city has had small data centers for years, but their development became a political issue in April after The Seattle Times reported that four developers had approached the city-run utility, inquiring about building five larger data centers in the city.
Those are still very small compared with the massive A.I. computing complexes Amazon and others are building around the country, but they would be much bigger than what was already in the city.
The City Council held a series of hearings about how to address data centers.
The Amazon employees testified that Seattle should consider conditions on allowing new data centers, such as requiring new renewable energy sources of power, banning the use of nondisclosure agreements between the city and developers, and limiting public subsidies. They offered to help create new rules based on their experience as tech workers.
“Seattle needs to set the terms so the way any new data centers get built here actually moves us closer to the future we want,” Darius Irani, who has worked as a software engineer in Amazon’s grocery business since 2021, said at a June 3 hearing before the Council’s Parks and City Light Committee.
He suggested requiring public reporting of water and power use, banning shell companies and harnessing the heat emitted from the chips in data centers to warm nearby buildings.
Amazon told news organizations at the time that it respected “our colleagues’ right to voice their opinions” and that the company did not have plans to build data centers within the city limits.
On June 9, the Council unanimously voted for a one-year moratorium on new, large data centers in order to give it time to develop regulations.
The next day, an Amazon employee relations staff member met the three workers in individual meetings and told them that they were under investigation for their testimony, according to the complaint. Mr. Irani said he was repeatedly questioned about his testimony and who else at Amazon was present at the hearings.
“It feels like they say one thing publicly and try to silence and intimidate me privately, which I think is wrong,” Mr. Irani said.
He and Mr. Schloesser said they were incredulous when the company told them it was looking into whether they violated the company’s corporate communications policy by misrepresenting themselves as spokespeople for Amazon.
“It is totally absurd,” Mr. Schloesser said. “I don’t think anyone could possibly think I am a spokesperson for Amazon.”
They and other employees started their testimony with the same phrase: “I’m proud to live in a city where employees who speak out politically are legally protected against retaliation by their employers,” a reference to the city’s civil rights laws.
“We were very deliberate in how we spoke out, to ensure we were staying within those protections,” Mr. Schloesser said. “We just made general statements saying we support the government’s right to regulate data centers and A.I.”
Amazons said employees were not allowed to speak publicly about the commercial activities of the company, which it believes is what happened.
The complaint asks the Seattle Office for Civil Rights to investigate the claims. Under the department’s process, if it finds “reasonable cause” that discrimination occurred, it gives the parties a week to reach a settlement.
If they can’t reach an agreement, the office passes the case on to the city attorney’s office to bring to an administrative law judge, which can impose various forms of monetary or process relief.
