In November 2018, more than 20,000 Googlers briefly walked off their jobs to protest the company’s lax treatment of executives who sexually harassed their subordinates. At the time, there was some debate about whether the protest was a singular event that came in response to some particularly outrageous behavior, or whether it portended the rise of a new tech labor movement. Two years later, after prominent actions by tech company employees related to their employers’ policies on climate change and government contracts , it seems clear that it was the latter — and that the movement has accelerated along with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amazon denies retaliating against organizing workers, and has implemented measures intended to reduce the risk of workers getting sick during the pandemic. But those efforts have not satisfied some members of its own white-collar workforce, who have begun to organize on behalf of their blue-collar colleagues. Those efforts took the form of a digital calendar invitation, the calendar invitation disappeared, and now we have a caper on our hands. Shirin Ghaffary has the story at Recode

Several of Amazon’s corporate employees are urging thousands of their colleagues to defy their employer by taking this Friday off work en masse to instead gather virtually and discuss how to push for more rights for the company’s warehouse workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, several Amazon employees have told Recode that invitations to the virtual event have mysteriously disappeared from their calendars and inboxes.

Workers told Recode they believe Amazon’s management deleted the event in an attempt to quash a growing collaboration between corporate and warehouse-level employees over workers’ labor rights and environmental concerns.

Amazon declined to comment when asked if it had deleted the event.

As Ghaffary notes, the missing meeting is likely to escalate tensions at the company, where leaked emails from earlier this month already showed mounting dissension over the company’s treatment of labor issues in its workforce.

As chaos roiled Amazon over the past weeks, I’ve often wondered where Jeff Bezos has been in all this. The CEO has largely avoided working on the day-to-day operations of the company for years, according to a 2018 interview with Forbes . As Karen Weise reports in a revealing piece in the New York Times , COVID-19 has drawn him back in — but only gradually, and with little direct communication to the outside world.

On one hand, I’m not going to argue that there’s a single, “right” way the CEO of a tech giant should be spending their time at the moment. All of them have wrenching, conflicting demands on their day, and deciding what to delegate and what to do yourself is a minefield for anyone in a leadership role.

On the other, it has been clear for more than a month now that Amazon’s most acute crisis is in its warehouses — and the CEO’s belated attention to that crisis has had measurable effects. This anecdote from Weise’s story will stay with me for a long time:

On April 8, when the virus had spread to more than 50 Amazon facilities, Mr. Bezos made a surprise visit to a Whole Foods store and an Amazon warehouse, both near Dallas, which the company filmed. Afterward, he asked other executives why masks, which the company had finally obtained, weren’t being required, according to a person involved in the response.

A few days later, Amazon told its warehouse workers that they had to wear masks.

Something for Amazon’s white-collar workers to discuss on Friday, assuming their employer doesn’t find a new way to thwart them from getting together.