Amazon engineer quits, forfeits US$1 million salary to protest firings at world’s largest online retailer
- Tim Bray said Amazon.com fired whistle-blowers who protested working conditions at the online retailer amid the Covid-19 crisis
- He indicated the division he worked for, Amazon Web Services, treated workers humanely by comparison
A senior Amazon.com engineer has resigned in solidarity with fired corporate and warehouse workers who protested working conditions at the company, the world’s largest online retailer and cloud services provider.
Tim Bray, a vice-president and veteran engineer with the company’s cloud computing division, said in a post on his personal blog that he quit “in dismay at Amazon firing whistle-blowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19”.
Bray, who worked in Vancouver, was a distinguished engineer, a coveted title large tech companies award to senior technologists. The decision is likely to cost him more than US$1 million in loss of salary and unvested Amazon stock, “not to mention the best job I ever had”, he said.
Amazon has been fighting the spread of coronavirus cases in its logistics network and a public relations battle against critics, who say the company has not done enough to make warehouses safe.
Small groups of workers at facilities around the US have walked off the job in protest, and an employee activist group, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, called for corporate employees to call in sick after two of its members were fired.