What Workers Think
We surveyed over 800 of our coworkers, both in a virtual survey that we sent out and in-person surveys collected in South Lake Union in Seattle.
Our biggest takeaways from the results:
A majority of surveyed Amazon corporate workers are worried that senior leadership is misleading the public about the company’s climate impact.
A majority of surveyed Amazon corporate workers do not trust senior leadership on issues such as AI ethics and the business’s environmental impact.
Amazon is full of workers who want the company to do better.
As the people working to create the technology, we must also have a say in how to manage the risks & impacts. We don’t trust senior leadership to responsibly lead the way.
And as workers living in uncertain times, the next steps are up to us. If you work at Amazon and are concerned about world leadership unwilling to take all the steps needed to tackle the climate crisis, if you're ready to talk about solutions to problems like how AI adoption is currently resulting in fossil fuel infrastructure build-out, if you want to connect with workers who are going to solve this together - block off your calendar for Thursday, 12/5, 5:30-7:00 PT and share your skills with us.
The Results
71% of respondents disagree that impact on climate is a key metric that consistently guides Amazon's business decisions.
Aggregated responses to the statement “Impact on climate is a key metric that consistently guides Amazon's business decisions.”
The result is not surprising given that Amazon is moving in the wrong direction on its most important goal. The company made a commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2040. But it doesn’t have any interim reduction targets to get there, and its annual carbon emissions have grown by a whopping 35% since 2019, when the Climate Pledge was first announced. What Amazon emits in one year is equivalent to you or I deciding to take a long-haul plane flight every day for 94,000 years. In fact, Amazon emits more carbon pollution than the 71 lowest emitting countries combined.
61% of respondents disagree Amazon’s leadership is accurately and responsibly representing Amazon's climate impact to the public.
Aggregated responses to the statement “Leadership is accurately and responsibly representing Amazon's climate impact to the *public*”
Our coworkers' doubts are backed up by investigative reporting in recent years covering a wide range of concerning actions by Amazon leadership. Actions speak louder than words, and this is what Amazon has been up to since making the climate pledge in 2019:
Amazon backtracked on a Shipment Zero goal to make half of shipments net-zero by 2030 and deleted the original blog post announcing it
Amazon was removed from the Science Based Targets Initiative, which validates companies’ evidence-based goals, after Amazon’s inability to meet standards for setting science-based emission goals
Amazon dramatically undercounted its carbon pollution. The company does not count the lifecycle emissions of all the products that it sells; it only counts the emissions of Amazon-branded products, which make up a paltry 1% of sales
Amazon is lobbying to weaken the standards of the GHG Protocol, which creates standards for how companies measure emissions that thousands of companies use
Amazon killed renewable energy legislation in Oregon because it wanted to power its new data centers by building connections to a gas pipeline
59% of respondents don't trust Amazon leadership to prioritize ethics as they develop AI products
Aggregated responses to the statement “I trust Amazon leadership to prioritize ethics as they develop AI products.”
As companies rush to build data centers to meet increased demand for artificial intelligence, electricity demand is expected to be driven even higher. Amazon has already been building out new gas plants in Virginia and delaying the retirement of coal plants in places like West Virginia to power out its new AI data centers.
AI competitors Microsoft and Google are also spending heavily on building out AI infrastructure, which is the reason those companies gave to explain why their emissions have increased. However, Amazon claims that its emissions were essentially flat last year, raising questions as to how it was able to accomplish this while investing heavily in AI.
52% of employees were not supportive of Amazon providing AI and other services to oil & gas companies.
Aggregated responses to the statement “I am supportive of Amazon providing AI and other services to oil & gas companies.”
Amazon makes billions from selling tailored AI services to fossil fuel companies, helping them extract more oil and gas. We project that by next year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) could be making $9.6 billion annually from the oil and gas industry alone — about 10% of AWS revenue. The OSDU Data Platform on AWS is a suite of technologies used by oil and gas companies to quickly discover and develop new fracking sites and oil wells. This at a time when scientists have warned that the extracting from the world’s existing oil wells already means surpassing limits to remain within a stable, livable climate of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
89% of workers who responded agree that Amazon should hold itself accountable to the same standards other large retail companies do in accounting for carbon emissions related to all product sales."
Amazon currently excludes a variety of carbon emissions that these competitors include in their carbon footprint calculations.
Aggregated responses to the statement “Amazon should hold itself accountable to the same standards that Target, Walmart, and other large retail companies do in accounting for carbon emissions related to all product sales.”
Unlike other large companies, such as Target and Walmart, Amazon does not count emissions from the manufacture and use of products that it buys directly from the manufacturer and sells to the consumer (39% of its sales). Amazon also doesn’t count emissions from products which are sold by third-parties on the Amazon website (60% of its sales). Instead, unlike other major companies, Amazon only counts the emissions from Amazon branded products, which account for about 1% of its sales. This creative accounting allows Amazon to report 4 times the revenue of Target alongside 9% lower carbon emissions. So compared to its competitors, the company is dramatically undercounting its carbon footprint — even as it claims to be a leader in sustainability.
Nearly one third of workers who responded would not feel comfortable with Amazon opening a new warehouse or delivery hub in their community.
Aggregated responses to the statement “I would feel comfortable with Amazon opening a new warehouse or delivery hub in my community.”
Amazon’s warehouses drive massive air pollution that largely affects surrounding communities of color. In the US, 69% of Amazon warehouses have more people of color living in a mile radius than the rest of the region. The county of San Bernardino, an area full of Amazon warehouses because 40% of Amazon’s global goods make their way through the Inland Empire, has been ranked as having the worst ozone pollution in the US, recently suffering an average of 175 days of unhealthy air each year.
64% of corporate workers who responded do not think that warehouse workers are treated well by Amazon.
Aggregated responses to the statement “I believe warehouse workers are treated well by Amazon”
Amazon warehouse and delivery workers have been working through extreme heat with minimal safety measures. In response to worker concerns at a San Bernardino warehouse, the company asserted that temperatures at the facility had never exceeded 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Workers snuck thermometers in and recorded temperatures soaring to 89°F in the warehouse, 96°F inside cargo trucks, and 121°F on the tarmac, where workers spent much of their days unloading planes. Amazon Management handed out popsicles in Chicago instead of installing AC, refused to fix broken fans in the Seattle region, forced workers to pledge to forego breaks until quotas were met in India, or even refused to turn on fans in Bessemer, Alabama.
80% of employees who responded believe employees have the skills and imagination to improve Amazon’s climate impact.
Aggregated responses to the statement “Amazon employees have the skills and imagination to improve Amazon’s climate impact..”
Amazon workers have been the push behind Amazon’s major climate progress so far. In December 2018, a group of employees started with a shareholder resolution asking Amazon to create a comprehensive, company-wide plan to reduce fossil fuel dependency, forming Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. In 2019, we organized thousands of our coworkers to walkout as part of the Global Climate Strike, leading to Amazon’s Climate Pledge announcement. From 2021-2022, we worked on original research outlining how Amazon’s warehouse siting playbook was disproportionately siting warehouses and the accompanying pollution in communities of color and organized with community members and hundreds of tech workers. Amazon conceded by backing out of building a warehouse in a historically Black & Asian neighborhood in Seattle and to incorporate pollution as a metric in determining where to roll out EV delivery vans first. As a group, we have proven that we can influence Amazon’s climate commitments, and that employees working together can build power to pressure large corporations to change.
Methodology & FAQ
Why did we survey our coworkers?
We did this because we're concerned. We think Amazon has the resources to do better for the climate and for our communities, but we are worried Amazon leadership is making decisions that prioritize only the bottom line, while actively harming employees and the environment.
We have been hearing from our coworkers and personal networks about many of these concerns individually. However, Amazon limits forums for employees to honestly share opinions and feedback, so we hoped this survey would help illuminate the pervasive concerns employees share.
How did we collect and verify survey results?
We collected and verified 803 total responses from Amazon employees from a combination of in-person surveying in Seattle and virtual surveying through our website. We verified that the responses came from Amazon employees by checking survey respondents' employee ID.
Note: In sharing the results above, we’ve added facts below the survey results, because we think it adds important context to why we’re interested in these questions. For the survey, employees were asked to rate the statements above the pie graphs on a scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Disagree, without any additional context on Amazon’s behavior.
Where can I learn more about Amazon’s actions?
All information outside of survey results shared here on this page comes from our detailed research report on Amazon’s progress on it’s climate commitments! We encourage you to check out the full report.