Amazon employees say they’re facing termination for backing data center limits
Amazon employees say they’re facing termination for backing data center limits
亚马逊员工称因支持限制数据中心建设而面临解雇
When three Amazon software engineers testified earlier this month at Seattle City Council hearings about data centers, they started their testimony by citing a city law barring employment discrimination over political speech. Now, they’re accusing their employer of breaking that law by retaliating against them.
本月初，三名亚马逊软件工程师在西雅图市议会关于数据中心的听证会上作证时，首先引用了一项禁止因政治言论而进行就业歧视的城市法律。现在，他们指控雇主通过报复行为违反了该法律。
On June 10th — one week after the hearing, and one day after the City Council passed a milestone moratorium on data centers — Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani, and Liesl Wigand were each called into an impromptu meeting with Amazon’s “Employee Relations.” HR representatives told the employees that the company was investigating them and said there could be disciplinary action, up to and including termination. On Thursday, the three filed a legal complaint requesting that the Seattle Office for Civil Rights investigate the matter, alleging that Amazon engaged in prohibited employment discrimination.
6月10日——听证会结束一周后，也是市议会通过具有里程碑意义的数据中心暂停令的次日——Patrick Schloesser、Darius Irani 和 Liesl Wigand 分别被叫去参加了与亚马逊“员工关系部”的临时会议。人力资源代表告知这些员工，公司正在对他们进行调查，并表示可能会采取纪律处分，包括解雇。周四，这三人提交了一份法律投诉，要求西雅图民权办公室对此事进行调查，指控亚马逊实施了被禁止的就业歧视。
“I am unwilling to accept a reality in which Amazon or any corporation can silence me in exercising my rights,” Schloesser told The Verge in an interview. “We’re not going to step back in line.”
“我无法接受亚马逊或任何公司能够在我行使权利时让我噤声的现实，”Schloesser 在接受《The Verge》采访时表示。“我们不会退缩。”
When reached for comment, Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan said, “While our teammates are always free to talk about their working environment, we have policies against speaking as a representative of the company without following certain procedures … we’re investigating whether there was a violation of our policies and may or may not take action based on what we find. It’s important to note that we don’t tolerate retaliatory behavior.”
在被要求置评时，亚马逊发言人 Margaret Callahan 表示：“虽然我们的团队成员可以自由谈论他们的工作环境，但我们有相关政策，禁止在未遵循特定程序的情况下以公司代表身份发言……我们正在调查是否存在违反政策的行为，并可能根据调查结果采取或不采取行动。需要指出的是，我们绝不容忍报复行为。”
Amazon also disputed the characterization that Amazon had plans in place to fire the employees. Callahan said, “It’s also inaccurate to say that we have plans to terminate these employees or told them they were at risk of termination.”
亚马逊还反驳了关于公司计划解雇这些员工的说法。Callahan 表示：“说我们有计划解雇这些员工，或者告诉他们面临解雇风险，这种说法是不准确的。”
The news comes shortly after Seattle officially enacted a one-year moratorium on large-scale data centers, tabling new proposals while council members consider legislation to award the city more benefits and request research on data center effects on land use, public health, water use, jobs, utility rates, city infrastructure, and more. Earlier this month, many local residents attended Seattle City Council hearings in support of data center regulations and the moratorium. Five Amazon employees — including Schloesser, Irani, and Wigand — were among them.
在此消息传出前不久，西雅图正式对大型数据中心实施了为期一年的暂停令，搁置了新的提案，同时议员们正在考虑立法，以使城市获得更多利益，并要求对数据中心在土地利用、公共卫生、用水、就业、公用事业费率、城市基础设施等方面的影响进行研究。本月初，许多当地居民参加了西雅图市议会的听证会，支持对数据中心进行监管并实施暂停令。包括 Schloesser、Irani 和 Wigand 在内的五名亚马逊员工也参与其中。
The five are all members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), a group of current and former employees dedicated to the climate crisis. Last year, the group published an open letter signed by more than 1,000 Amazon employees that urged Amazon to power all its data centers with 100 percent additional, local renewable energy.
这五人都是“亚马逊气候正义员工”（AECJ）的成员，这是一个由致力于应对气候危机的现任和前任员工组成的团体。去年，该团体发表了一封由 1,000 多名亚马逊员工签署的公开信，敦促亚马逊为其所有数据中心提供 100% 的额外本地可再生能源。
Schloesser says that when he received a cold call over Zoom, he was less than half an hour away from a design review meeting, where he was set to show dozens of people a project he’d been working on for months. He answered the call to find an HR representative, who asked Schloesser about his whereabouts and what he’d said at the City Council meeting — and immediately got a “foreboding sense that this is not a safe place for me.” Schloesser said it felt like the representative “was trying to get me to admit to something,” particularly due to the lack of notice. He recalled the representative saying he violated Amazon’s corporate communications policy, which bans acting as a spokesperson for Amazon without preapproval. But Schloesser, like the other Amazon employees who testified at the City Council hearings, only identified himself by his role and his membership in AECJ — not, say, as a “software engineer at Amazon.”
Schloesser 说，当他接到 Zoom 上的突击电话时，距离他参加一场设计评审会议还有不到半小时，他本打算在会上向几十个人展示他研究了几个月的项目。他接听电话后发现对方是一名人力资源代表，该代表询问 Schloesser 的行踪以及他在市议会会议上的发言内容——他立刻产生了一种“这里对我来说不安全的不祥预感”。Schloesser 说，感觉对方“试图让我承认什么”，特别是因为事先没有任何通知。他回忆说，该代表称他违反了亚马逊的企业通讯政策，该政策禁止在未经预先批准的情况下担任亚马逊的发言人。但 Schloesser 和其他在市议会听证会上作证的亚马逊员工一样，仅以自己的职位和 AECJ 成员身份进行自我介绍，并没有说自己是“亚马逊的软件工程师”。
Schloesser said he felt “kind of horrified” after the meeting. He added, “We all harnessed this sense of indignation and anger that after everything we’ve gone through at this company, and after making a very uncontroversial statement where we’re simply exercising our rights to speak out politically as employees in the city of Seattle.”
Schloesser 说，会议结束后他感到“有点惊恐”。他补充道：“我们都感到愤慨和愤怒，因为在经历了这家公司的一切之后，在我们仅仅作为西雅图市的员工行使政治发言权，发表了非常温和的声明之后，竟然会遭遇这些。”
Irani told The Verge that he received an email from HR on June 9th, with a calendar event for the next day to discuss a “confidential” matter. He said the representative asked about other Amazon employees who had attended the City Council hearings and that he felt like “they were waiting for me to admit I had done something wrong.”
Irani 告诉《The Verge》，他在 6 月 9 日收到了一封来自人力资源的电子邮件，其中包含次日讨论“机密”事项的日历邀请。他说，代表询问了其他参加市议会听证会的亚马逊员工，他感觉“他们是在等我承认自己做错了什么”。
“I left this meeting feeling rattled and unsure of myself, but after speaking with the other two AECJ members who gave testimony, to find that they’d faced similar experiences, then I started feeling angry — because all I was doing was sharing my opinion that AI and data centers should be regulated,” Irani said.
“离开会议时，我感到心烦意乱，对自己产生了怀疑，但在与另外两名作证的 AECJ 成员交谈并发现他们也经历了类似的事情后，我开始感到愤怒——因为我所做的只是分享我的观点，即人工智能和数据中心应该受到监管，”Irani 说。
The legal complaint filed Thursday alleges that Amazon violated Seattle law and requests that the Office for Civil Rights “investigate these allegations and take all necessary action to remedy any unlawful discrimination committed by Amazon.”
周四提交的法律投诉指控亚马逊违反了西雅图法律，并要求民权办公室“调查这些指控，并采取一切必要行动，纠正亚马逊所实施的任何非法歧视行为。”
Abby Lawlor, AECJ’s counsel and an attorney at Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt, said in a statement that Seattle is “one of just a few jurisdictions in the country that prohibits private employers from discriminating against their employees based on the political beliefs they hold and the organizations they belong to. This protection gave AECJ members confidence in speaking out before the [City Council].”
AECJ 的法律顾问、Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt 律师事务所的律师 Abby Lawlor 在一份声明中表示，西雅图是“全国为数不多的禁止私营雇主基于员工持有的政治信仰和所属组织而对其进行歧视的司法管辖区之一。这种保护给了 AECJ 成员在（市议会）前发言的信心。”