Amazon has a problem.
Or rather, many problems. It’s hard to keep track of the constant stream of reporting alleging Amazon’s participation in serious privacy violations, labor rights infringement, and human rights transgressions. Over the years, these problems have compounded—and the company’s investors are starting to get loud.
This year, Amazon is facing an astonishing eighteen proposals from its own shareholders at its annual general meeting—a record number for any single company in a given year. The proposals—all of which the company opposes—call on Amazon to answer tough questions on a variety of technology impacts, labor practices, and corporate governance concerns.
Three proposals highlight the seriousness of digital rights concerns.
News reports allege, for example, that Amazon has censored user reviews and removed product listings on its e-commerce platform to curry favor with authoritarian governments—but because Amazon is “by far the least transparent U.S.-based tech company,” according to Ranking Digital Rights, investors are in the dark about what’s actually going on. And since investors are on the hook if Amazon faces lawsuits or other damages for infringing on internationally-recognized human rights, that’s a big deal.
That’s why Open MIC joined the Adrian Dominican Sisters as a co-filer for Proposal 8 on Amazon’s proxy statement, requesting the company revise its transparency disclosures to share important details about what it removes from its e-commerce platform, especially in response to (or in anticipation of) government requests.
Similarly, Proposal 7 calls for an independent report on Amazon’s “customer due diligence,” which is the principle that companies have a responsibility to know who their customers are, and make sure that their products won’t be used to violate rights.
Amazon routinely sells surveillance technology to government-affiliated entities with a history of infringing on peoples’ freedoms, including powering ICE raids, mass internment of Uyghurs in China, Palestinian apartheid, and surveillance of journalists and dissidents in the United Arab Emirates. Whatever Amazon’s current due diligence policies are, they don’t seem to be working, and investors want answers. The Investor Advocates for Social Justice filed this proposal on behalf of the American Baptist Home Mission Society.
Proposal 23 addresses growing concern about facial recognition technology, asking Amazon to report on how its “Rekognition” product may threaten civil rights or “unfairly or disproportionately target or surveil people of color, immigrants and activists in the U.S.”
But despite claiming to engage directly with shareholder proponents, Amazon refused to talk to investors about any of these three proposals.
When an investor files a proposal at a company, it’s common for the company to open dialogue to ask questions and attempt to resolve the shareholders’ concerns. Instead, Amazon decided to dismiss the whole suite of investor proposals without even a conversation.
That’s a bad way to run a company, and a great way to tell investors you’re not interested in looking out for them.
At the company’s annual meeting on May 24, investors have an opportunity to send Amazon a message that its efforts to shut out shareholders cannot continue. Voting to support important resolutions like Items 7, 8 and 23 empowers investors to hold Amazon accountable for its risky behavior.
This is not a solicitation of authority to vote your proxy. Please DO NOT send us your proxy card. Open MIC is not able to vote your proxies, nor does this communication contemplate such an event.
For more information:
Dana Floberg
Advocacy Director, Open MIC
dfloberg@openmic.org