“We realized we could use our position as employees and our power and our rights as shareholders to bring visibility of this issue to the board and the top leaders of this company,” said Eliza Pan, a program manager who has worked at Amazon for five years and is one of the employees who signed on to the proposal.

Ms. Pan, who earned Amazon shares as part of her compensation package, said workers must own at least $2,000 in stock for a year to file a shareholder proposal. “We had this power, and we wanted to leverage that power,” she said.

The move by Amazon’s employees builds upon similar activism at Google this year. In March, its workers were part of a shareholder petition by Zevin Asset Management that sought to link executive compensation to diversity and inclusion goals. Google’s employees did not directly file the proposal, but joined Zevin and presented it at the annual shareholder meeting of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

The proposal was ultimately voted down, but Pat Miguel Tomaino, the director of socially responsible investing at Zevin, said the firm planned to work with Google employees to resubmit it for the 2019 shareholder meeting.

“Workers are looking at who holds power and where changes can be made,” said Yana Calou, an engagement manager at Coworker.org, an organization that allows colleagues to start campaigns together. “Workers are shareholders themselves, and risks to workers and users are often risks to shareholders, so there is a natural alliance of shared interests.”