Amazon Employees Threatened Over Data Center Limits Push

Seattle activists assert they faced disciplinary meetings with Human Resources after advocating for stricter regulations concerning data centers.

Three Amazon software engineers, who testified before the Seattle City Council earlier this month regarding data centers, initiated their statements by referencing a municipal ordinance that prohibits employment discrimination based on political speech. They are now accusing Amazon of violating this very law through retaliatory actions.

On June 10th, merely a week after their testimony and the day following the City Council's approval of a significant moratorium on data centers, Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani, and Liesl Wigand were individually summoned to unexpected meetings with Amazon’s “Employee Relations” department. Human Resources representatives informed them that the company was conducting an investigation, potentially leading to disciplinary measures, including termination. In response, the trio filed a formal legal complaint on Thursday, urging the Seattle Office for Civil Rights to investigate their claims of prohibited employment discrimination by Amazon.

“I am unwilling to accept a reality in which Amazon or any corporation can silence me in exercising my rights,” Schloesser conveyed to The Verge in an interview, adding, “We’re not going to step back in line.”

Amazon did not provide an immediate response when contacted for comment.

This development follows Seattle's official enactment of a one-year moratorium on large-scale data centers. This pause will allow council members to evaluate new proposals and consider legislation aimed at securing greater benefits for the city, while also commissioning research into data centers' impacts on land use, public health, water consumption, employment, utility rates, and urban infrastructure, among other factors. Earlier in the month, numerous local residents, including five Amazon employees such as Schloesser, Irani, and Wigand, participated in Seattle City Council hearings to advocate for data center regulations and the moratorium.

All five individuals are members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), an organization comprising current and former employees committed to addressing the climate crisis. Last year, AECJ issued an open letter, endorsed by over 1,000 Amazon employees, which called upon the company to power all its data centers with 100 percent additional, locally sourced renewable energy.

Schloesser recounted receiving an unexpected Zoom call while preparing for a design review meeting to present a project he had dedicated months to. Upon answering, he was met by an HR representative who inquired about his location and the statements he made at the City Council meeting. Schloesser immediately felt a “foreboding sense that this is not a safe place for me,” perceiving that the representative “was trying to get me to admit to something,” especially given the lack of prior notification. He recalled being told he had violated Amazon’s corporate communications policy, which prohibits employees from acting as company spokespersons without preapproval. However, Schloesser, like his colleagues who testified, identified himself solely by his role and his affiliation with AECJ, rather than as an official Amazon representative.

Following the meeting, Schloesser expressed feeling “kind of horrified.” He elaborated, “We all harnessed this sense of indignation and anger that after everything we’ve gone through at this company, and after making a very uncontroversial statement where we’re simply exercising our rights to speak out politically as employees in the city of Seattle.”

Darius Irani informed The Verge that he received an email from HR on June 9th, scheduling a “confidential” discussion for the following day. He noted that the representative inquired about other Amazon employees present at the City Council hearings, which led him to feel “they were waiting for me to admit I had done something wrong.”

“I left this meeting feeling rattled and unsure of myself,” Irani stated, “but after speaking with the other two AECJ members who gave testimony, to find that they’d faced similar experiences, then I started feeling angry — because all I was doing was sharing my opinion that AI and data centers should be regulated.”

The legal complaint submitted on Thursday asserts that Amazon contravened Seattle law and formally requests that the Office for Civil Rights “investigate these allegations and take all necessary action to remedy any unlawful discrimination committed by Amazon.”

Abby Lawlor, counsel for AECJ and an attorney at Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt, emphasized in a statement that Seattle stands as “one of just a few jurisdictions in the country that prohibits private employers from discriminating against their employees based on the political beliefs they hold and the organizations they belong to.” She further noted that this legal protection empowered AECJ members to confidently address the Seattle City Council in support of local data center and AI regulation, and that it expressly forbids the actions Amazon is currently undertaking—investigating and threatening their employment as a direct consequence of their advocacy.

Eliza Pan, an AECJ spokesperson, declared in a statement that “Amazon’s attempts to intimidate our members is an unfair and discriminatory employment practice.” She continued, “It’s an abuse of our democracy and rule of law. Tech workers must be able to speak and act on their beliefs so that CEOs can’t just steamroll all of us to get what they want. Amazon can’t be allowed to intimidate its employees and we should all be worried if they succeed.”

Irani shared that he has closely monitored data center expansions nationwide and, like many who testified at the City Council hearings, believes that the primary beneficiaries are typically tech companies, rather than local communities.

“It really makes me upset how communities have been excluded and are facing so many consequences and harms from how this buildout has been done,” he remarked. “Communities should have a say in how [data center] infrastructure is rolled out. So I was proud to testify.”

According to The Seattle Times, two months prior to the Seattle City Council's moratorium vote, four unidentified companies had proposed five large-scale data centers within city boundaries. These facilities, if built, would collectively demand maximum electricity equivalent to one-third of Seattle’s average daily consumption, representing a tenfold increase in power usage compared to the city’s existing data centers.

Concerns surrounding the proliferation of large data centers have garnered increasing national attention in recent months, with common complaints citing excessive noise, significant water consumption, and escalating local electricity costs. This issue has been particularly contentious within the broader Seattle metropolitan area, home to both Amazon and Microsoft headquarters.

Schloesser indicated that the retaliation for his testimony was not entirely unexpected. “Pretty much as soon as I started I was aware of this culture of fear that Amazon creates — they do it with layoffs, they do it with performance improvement plans, stack ranking us to compete against each other, unregretted attrition quotas,” he explained. He concluded, “If you’re afraid of losing your job just by doing the work that you’re expected to do day to day, you’re very unlikely to be willing to step out of line and do anything like speak out. Even if it’s legally protected speech.”