Settlement forces Amazon to tell workers they can’t be fired for organizing

Enlarge / Tech workers show support for Maren Costa (left) and Emily Cunningham (right) on Sept 16, 2021. (credit: Amazon Employees for Climate Justice)

Amazon has agreed to a settlement with two employees who alleged that they were illegally fired for speaking out about warehouse working conditions during the pandemic.

"Amazon will be required to pay us our lost wages and post a notice to all of its tech and warehouse workers nationwide that Amazon can't fire workers for organizing and exercising their rights," the fired workers, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, said in a statement yesterday. "It's also not lost on us that we are two women who were targeted for firing. Inequality, racism, and sexism are at the heart of both the climate crisis and the pandemic."

Costa and Cunningham were tech workers at Amazon's Seattle headquarters and were fired in April 2020. "Both were active in an internal employee group advocating for climate issues and had circulated a petition inside the company calling on Amazon to expand benefits and pay for employees in warehouses," we noted in an article at the time.

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