Amazon vice-president quits over virus firings

A vice-president at Amazon, Tim Bray, has quit 'in dismay' at the internet giant's crackdown on workers who criticised it over coronavirus safety measures.

Tim Bray described the firing of protesters as "evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture".

Workers have criticised Amazon for not doing enough to protect warehouse staff against the virus.

Amazon declined to comment, but has previously defended its actions.

Bray, who was a senior engineer at Amazon Web Services, set out in a blog why he had left the company where he had worked for five years.

The firm faces possible investigation of worker rights violations in New York, where the company fired the organiser of a small protest about safety conditions at a warehouse.

Bray said Amazon also fired office staff who had been organising another protest and had spoken out against the company on climate issues.

"At that point, I snapped," he wrote, adding that he raised his concerns internally first.

"That done, remaining an Amazon [vice-president] would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So, I resigned," he wrote.

Bray said working at the firm had been "rewarding fun" and his decision would cost him financially.

"What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars, not to mention the best job I've ever had, working with awfully good people. So, I'm pretty blue," he wrote.

However, he said: "Firing whistleblowers isn't just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets.

"It's evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."

(Source: BBC)