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Amazon workers join the climate strike

Hundreds of Amazon workers left their desks Friday to join a thousands-strong climate strike march in Seattle.



Workers rallied in front of Amazon’s focal point – the Amazon Spheres, geodesic glass terrariums marking the company’s center of gravity in downtown Seattle – before marching to city hall. The mood was light, their march well ordered and rife with signage playing on Amazon slogans, including “Customer Obsessed = Climate Obsessed”. Those gathered joked that they were skipping a lunch at their desks to join the noontime protest.

The grim realities of the climate crisis were mentioned, particularly the challenges facing Amazon warehouse workers in southern California, but the 2,000-or-so workers and throngs of supporters were prepared to celebrate. They’d won, after all, Amazon’s first broad pledge to contain its carbon footprint.

“It was important to be part of the fight,” said Amazon worker Evan Pulgino. Photograph: Levi Pulkinnen/The Guardian

EVAN: Bobbing along with a stream of colleagues, Evan Pulgino was awestruck.

Pulgino, a software engineer from Pittsburgh who arrived in Seattle three years ago to work at Amazon, was a face in the crowd of several thousand Amazon and Google employees and their supporters. Badges colored to mark seniority, standard at Amazon, hung from lanyards and fobs.

Having set out from the Amazon Spheres in downtown Seattle, the tech crowd merged with throngs of high schoolers arriving on Fifth Avenue to join the march on Seattle’s City Hall. Pulgino described the disparate mass of humanity – Amazon’s orderly herd of 20s and 30-somethings mixing with exuberant teens – as “incredible”.

Pulgino, who has been active on climate issues since October, said he was cheered by the commitment made Thursday by Amazon to attain zero net carbon emissions by 2040. It was a start, he said, and a heartening one. Pulgino objected to Amazon’s continued financial support for climate change-denying thinktanks and politicians, and to Amazon Web Services’ contracts with fossil fuel companies.

“It was important to be part of the fight,” said Pulgino, carrying a sign that read “Stop funding climate denial, start leading for zero emissions”.

“Tech drives so much change,” the 38-year-old continued. “If Amazon leads the way, other companies will follow.”

Amazon Employees For Climate Justice (@AMZNforClimate) Let's raise the bar, not the temperature! #ClimateStrike #AMZNClimate pic.twitter.com/dvCMo22Hcf

ROSHNI: Roshni Naidu, a five-year Amazon veteran, expected something out of Finding Nemo when last year she traveled to Australia to take in the Great Barrier Reef. Naidu, 28, was shocked to find a graying, vacant space.

“It was nothing at all like what I expected,” said Naidu, a senior technical product manager.

Returning to Seattle shaken by witnessing the degradation of the planet, Naidu got to work at her work. She began agitating with other Amazon employees for the company to get it right on climate change.

Amazon, she said, can lead on climate. She described herself as “cautiously celebratory” after company leaders announced a suite of climate change-related reforms aimed at eliminating Amazon’s carbon footprint by 2040.

“It’s a sign that collective action works,” Naidu said. Friday’s march, she added, “puts even more pressure on Amazon to do more.”

It’s great, she said, to be able to say she’s “saving the world”.

Nick Andrews, a program manager at Amazon, was a chant leader for the climate strike in Seattle. Photograph: Levi Pulkinnen/The Guardian

NICK: Milling among his climate activist colleagues, Nick Andrews, a program manager now in his sixth year at Amazon, was ready to scream. Which, as a chant leader, was his job for the afternoon.



Andrews, 32, had been active for months pushing Amazon to reduce its climate footprint and cut ties to the fossil fuel industry. Like several of his colleagues, he struck a tone more disappointed than angry. Amazon workers tend to believe their company can do anything, including save the planet.

At the outset, Andrews said, pushing the sometimes autocratic company seemed like it would be nerve-racking work. It didn’t turn out that way.

“Everyone came in with trepidation,” Andrews said. “But it’s really received a company-wide embrace.”

It helps, he said, that he and other Amazonians turn out – unsurprisingly to those who’ve watched the company come to dominate the retail economy and cloud computing – to be “very good organizers”.

He celebrated on Thursday when Amazon leaders announced a series of steps designed to eliminate Amazon’s net carbon footprint. He looks forward to Amazon doing more, though.

“We pride ourselves on being a bar-pushing company,” Andrews said. “This is a good start, but I think we can do better.”