Tim Bray “snapped.”
The Amazon vice president and distinguished engineer left the company on May 1 — a historic day for labor organizers — saying he “quit in dismay” over the firings of several colleagues who spoke out about the COVID-19 crisis.
In a candid blog post explaining his departure, Bray said that he decided to leave after his efforts to elevate his concerns through the proper channels were ignored. Bray said he is walking away from “a million (pre-tax) dollars, not to mention the best job I’ve ever had.”
Amazon declined to comment on Bray’s resignation.
The tech giant is walking a tightrope as COVID-19 cases in its warehouses climb, employee activists speak out, politicians scrutinize the company’s safety practices, and orders surge from customers stuck at home. Amid the internal unrest, Amazon fired four employees who criticized their employer’s response to the coronavirus crisis, although company spokespeople say not all of the employees were let go for their activism.
Amazon says Christian Smalls, a warehouse worker in New York, was fired for breaking a company-enforced quarantine. But that position was clouded when a memo written by Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky that were leaked to Vice News. Zapolsky, who later apologized publicly, called Smalls “not smart or articulate” in the memo and sought to make him the face of the labor movement in New York.
In his blog post, Bray called the remarks “brutally insensitive” and the decision to fire employees “chickenshit,” “designed to create a climate of fear,” and “like painting a sign on your forehead saying ‘Either guilty, or has something to hide.’ ”
There are COVID-19 cases in at least 129 Amazon fulfillment centers, according to an internal tally maintained by warehouse workers in a private Facebook group. The Intercept’s Daniel Medina reports that the number exceeds 150 warehouses, with at least 650 Amazon employees who have tested positive for the virus.
Amazon is declining to disclose the number of employees who have contracted the virus or how many warehouses have outbreaks, a key concern among workers and activists.
“At the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of Covid-19 response,” Bray said. “It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential.”
The outbreaks have renewed scrutiny of Amazon from elected officials. New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating conditions inside Amazon warehouses and said the inquiry is raising “concerns that Amazon’s health and safety measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are so inadequate that they may violate several provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” in a letter to the company obtained by NPR.
Meanwhile, the fired employees, along with former colleagues, continue to make noise about the company’s response to the crisis. Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, two user experience designers and employee activists Amazon fired, held a virtual walkout on April 24. Workers at Amazon and other companies walked off the job on May Day, on Friday.
Amazon says it has implemented 150 process changes and is going to “extreme measures” to protect employees and compensate them for working through the crisis. Those changes include mandatory temperature screenings at all facilities, increased hourly base pay, and expanded sick time off polices.
“Our employees are doing incredible work for their communities every day, and we have invested heavily in their health and safety through increased safety measures and the procurement of millions of safety supplies and have invested nearly $700 million in increased pay,” Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski said last week.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company will spend nearly all of its operating profits this quarter on COVID-related expenses, including “getting products to customers and keeping employees safe” in his first-quarter earnings statement.
Those efforts were not enough to retain Bray, however. He left his role with Amazon’s cloud computing arm in Vancouver, B.C., after five years with the company.
He said that he believes Amazon is going to great lengths to prioritize worker safety “and let’s grant that you don’t turn a supertanker on a dime.” But he wrote that he ultimately resigned because remaining a VP of Amazon amounted to “signing off on actions I despised.”
“Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets,” he said. “It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”
