Amazon employees say they are facing layoffs for supporting data center limits

When three Amazon software engineers testified earlier this month at Seattle City Council hearings about the data center, they began their testimony by citing the city’s law against political discrimination. Now, they are accusing their employer of violating the law by retaliating.

On June 10 – one week after the hearing, and one day after the City Council passed special suspension at the data center – Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani, and Liesl Wigand were each invited to a recent meeting by Amazon’s “Employee Relations.” HR representatives told the employees that the company was investigating them and said there could be disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal. On Thursday, the three filed a complaint asking the Seattle Office for Civil Rights to investigate the matter, alleging that Amazon engaged in illegal employment discrimination.

“I don’t want to accept the reality that Amazon or any organization can stop me from exercising my rights,” Schloesser said. Seaside in conversation. “We’re not going back in line.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This story is coming soon to Seattle legal establishment a one-year moratorium on the central data center, offering new ideas as council members consider legislation to give the city more benefits and request a survey on what is happening at the data center on land use, public health, water use, jobs, utility prices, city construction, and more. Earlier this month, dozens of local residents attended Seattle City Council meetings to support the data center ordinance and the moratorium. Five Amazon employees — including Schloesser, Irani, and Wigand — were among them.

All five are members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), a group of current and former employees dedicated to climate issues. Last year, the group published an open letter signed by more than 1,000 Amazon employees urged Amazon to power all of its data centers with 100 percent renewable, locally renewable energy.

Schloesser says that when she received the cold call from Zoom, she was less than half an hour away from a review meeting, where she was scheduled to show the public the work she’s been working on for months. He answered a call to find an HR representative, who questioned Schloesser about his whereabouts and what he said at the City Council meeting – and immediately “realized that this is not a safe place for me.” Schloesser said it seemed like the representative was “trying to get me to admit something,” mostly out of ignorance. He recalled the representative as violating Amazon’s business policy, which prohibits acting as an Amazon spokesperson without approval. But Schloesser, like other Amazon employees who testified at City Council hearings, only identified himself by his position and membership at AECJ — not saying, as a “software engineer at Amazon.”

Schloesser said she felt like a “panic” after the meeting. He added, “We’ve all felt the anger and resentment we’ve experienced at this company, and we’ve made an unquestionable statement while exercising our right to political speech as employees of the city of Seattle.”

Iran said Seaside that he received an email from HR on June 9th, with a calendar for the next day to discuss a “confidential” matter. He said the representative asked about the Amazon employees who had attended the City Council meeting and felt like they were “waiting for me to admit I made a mistake.”

“I left the meeting feeling that I didn’t know, but after talking to two other AECJ members who gave evidence, to find out that they had experienced the same situation, I started to get angry – because all I was doing was sharing my opinion that AI and data center should be controlled,” said Irani.

The lawsuit filed Thursday alleges Amazon violated Seattle’s laws and requests that the Office for Civil Rights “investigate these allegations and take appropriate action to address any unlawful discrimination by Amazon.”

Abby Lawlor, an AECJ attorney and Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt attorney, said in a statement that Seattle is “one of the few states in the country that prohibits employers from discriminating against others based on their political beliefs and union membership. It prohibits exactly what Amazon is doing now—investigating and threatening them with their jobs because of their support.”

“Amazon’s attempt to intimidate our members is an unfair and discriminatory practice,” AECJ spokeswoman Eliza Pan said in a statement. “It’s an abuse of our democracy and our laws. Tech workers need to speak up and act on what they believe in so that CEOs don’t just worry about the rest of us getting what they want. Amazon can’t be allowed to threaten its workers and we should all be worried if they win.”

Irani said he strongly supports data center infrastructure around the world and believes, as many people testified at City Council meetings, that the benefits go mostly to tech companies and not local ones.

“It makes me very angry that communities have been pre-selected and are facing many and harmful consequences because of the way the project was designed,” he said. “Communities should have a say in how (data centers) are run. So I was proud to witness that.”

Two months before the Seattle City Council voted to suspend, four anonymous companies submitted proposals for five large data centers within the city limits, which, together, will have the amount of electricity equivalent to one-third of Seattle’s daily use – and will use 10 times more energy than the number of existing facilities in the city, according to Seattle Times.

A global frenzy to build large data centers has taken place more and more produced headlines in recent months, with complaints including noise, water consumption, high cost of local electricity, etc. The news has sent shockwaves through the greater Seattle area, where Amazon and Microsoft are both headquartered.

Schloesser said the retaliation for speaking out wasn’t a surprise at all. “When I first started, I realized the culture of fear that Amazon creates – they do it with layoffs, they do it with development plans, they put us in competition with each other, they share ruthlessly,” he said. “If you’re afraid of getting fired for just doing a job you’re supposed to do every day, it’s unlikely you’ll be willing to quit that job and do anything like speak out.