“Chickens**t” whistleblower firings are “poison,” resigning Amazon VP says
Firings highlight “toxicity running through the company culture,” Bray said. …
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Amazon VP Tim Bray, who had been with the company for more than five years, has resigned in protest of Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers and the firing of other employees who spoke out.
The company fired multiple warehouse and office workers in recent weeks amid organizing efforts to improve conditions in the company’s distribution centers, where individuals have contracted COVID-19. Firing the whistleblowers is “evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture,” Bray said in a blog post explaining his departure. “I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”
Bray was one of several thousand Amazon tech workers who joined together in 2019 as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, he said. Warehouse workers this year reached out to that group for support, as it was already organized. Members of AECJ then put their heft behind the warehouse workers’ push, organizing a large video conference for Thursday, April 16, as part of those efforts.
Two prominent leaders of that group, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, were fired the next day, following several other warehouse workers who were let go after advocating for better working conditions. “The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people,” Bray said. “Here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls. I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?”
“At that point I snapped,” Bray wrote. “VPs shouldn’t go publicly
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