Amazon VP quits over ‘chickensh*t’ firing of employees protesting warehouse conditions

After two Amazon employees were fired over speaking out about warehouse working conditions, a VP at the company quit with a fiery message. 

In a blog post, VP and engineer Tim Bray, who worked at the company for five years, said he “quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.” He went on to describe the firing as “chickenshit.” 

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

If you haven’t been following the drama, Amazon fired two workers who spoke out about the company’s warehouse conditions during the coronavirus outbreak. 

The UX designers, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, took to Twitter last month to talk about the “lack of safe and sanitary working conditions” for warehouse workers. Very shortly after, the workers were fired for “repeatedly violating internal policies.”

That same month, CNN reported that three warehouse workers were also fired for speaking out about their working conditions. 

Bray mentioned in his blog post that “firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink the poison.” 

“It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture.”

And, while he said that company is now prioritizing warehouse safety, he stressed that he believed the workers who spoke out, saying that “Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done.”

He also emphasized the difference in how Amazon treats its warehouse workers and corporate employees. 

Bray described Amazon Web Services (where he worked) as an “ethical organization” that treats its workers humanely and pushes them to find work-life balance, among other perks such as higher pay.

Meanwhile, warehouse workers are “treated like crap,” partly because healthcare in the U.S. is tied to employment. 

According to Bray, legal guardrails — achieved through “antitrust and living-wage and worker empowerment legislation” — are necessary to end the exploitation of workers.