A vice president at Amazon has resigned in protest of the company, accusing it of firing whistleblowers to create a "climate of fear."
Tim Bray, an Amazon Web Services senior engineer and vice president, announced that after five years with the company, "I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of COVID-19," Vice News reports.
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In his announcement, Bray named Smalls and other Amazon workers who have been fired, including two who also criticized the company's climate policies. He described the company's alleged "activist-firing" as "chickensh-t," "designed to create a climate of fear," and "like painting a sign on your forehead saying 'either guilty, or has something to hide,'" also saying it reveals a "vein of toxicity running through the company culture."
Bray also wrote that, "at the end of the day, the big problem isn't the specifics of COVID-19 response. It's that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential." Amazon has not responded to Bray's resignation but previously said it has "taken extreme measures to keep people safe" during the pandemic.
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