At Amazon’s Annual Meeting, Investors Continue to Raise Significant Risks to Workers and the Environment
In five shareholder proposals, investors illustrate how the company’s business model, policies, and practices create risks for multiple stakeholders that threaten shareholder value.
NEW YORK, NY, TUESDAY, MAY 27, 2025 – At Amazon’s ($AMZN) annual meeting last Thursday, five shareholder proposals were presented for a vote, each raising issues that illustrate how the company’s business model, dominance across multiple industries, and its lack of adequate risk management structures expose the company, its stakeholders and society to significant and material risks.
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world by market cap and the second-largest employer in the U.S. For several years, shareholders, including ICCR members, have been pressing the company through shareholder proposals to implement policies that will mitigate adverse social and/or environmental impacts. While all the proposals failed, investors say they will continue to raise the issues as they present material risks.
This proxy season, ten resolutions were filed, but Amazon sought no action relief from the SEC on nearly all proposals, and only five made it onto the proxy for a vote by shareholders. While the company faces several controversies related to freedom of association, that proposal was excluded from the proxy as a result of the no-action process. Worker rights have been a consistent theme at Amazon given the company’s business model, which subjects warehouse and delivery workers to ever-increasing production and speed pressures, and board/management’s strong opposition to employees’ unionization efforts.
“Tulipshare’s proposal, shaped by four years of engagement and backed by investors representing billions in assets, was built on a simple premise: workers power businesses,” said Antoine Argouges, CEO and founder of Tulipshare. “Although Amazon brands itself as ‘Earth’s Safest Place to Work,’ periodic reports have revealed a mounting safety and injury crisis in its warehouses, with employees facing unsafe working conditions and unfair treatment globally. This is a critical point in the company’s trajectory for Amazon to act on its stated values and take meaningful action towards protecting its workers. We investors must monitor Amazon’s leadership and guide the company to ensure that basic human rights are upheld in one of the world’s largest supply chains.”
On May 15th, ICCR hosted an investor briefing, The Hidden Liabilities of Amazon’s Workforce Model, which featured several Amazon employees who had suffered workplace injuries. The video recap from this event can be viewed here. Also on May 15th, the Strategic Organizing Center released a report, Failure to Deliver, which presented data from 2024, indicating that the rate of serious injuries in Amazon’s warehouses was nearly double that of non-Amazon warehouses, highlighting that Amazon’s operations have continued to be dramatically more dangerous for workers than the broader warehouse industry.
“Amazon shareholders and company leadership continue to ignore the company’s astronomical injury rate and brutal treatment of workers — even after the scathing findings of the Senate HELP Committee and the corporate-wide OSHA settlement“, said Bianca Agustin, Co-Executive Director of United for Respect Education Fund. “Amazon sacrifices safety for speed, leaving workers injured, underpaid, and struggling to survive. UFR is doubling down in our efforts to ensure Amazon associates get the dignity and respect they deserve.”
Investors also sought to understand how Amazon was overseeing social and environmental risks related to its increasing use of AI. A proposal filed by the AFL-CIO requested that the company assess potential human rights and worker rights impacts stemming from its use of tech and AI in the workplace.
“The AFL-CIO Equity Index Funds’ proposal requests an independent, third-party assessment of human rights risks associated with Amazon’s use of Artificial Intelligence,” said Isaiah Thomas, RWDSU union organizer and former Amazon warehouse employee. “The right to a safe and healthy workplace is an internationally recognized human right, and Amazon’s use of computer algorithms to set warehouse production quotas and its use of AI-powered robots creates potential safety risks that must be addressed.”
Two proposals highlighted how Amazon’s size and business model will significantly increase the GHG emissions responsible for driving the climate crisis, including a new proposal centered on Amazon’s accelerated build-out of data centers globally, which received 23% support.
Said Eliza Pan, spokesperson for Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, “The AI race is here and it’s changing both literal and political landscapes across the world. How shortsighted Amazon’s Board and investors must be to dismiss getting detailed and transparent information about how Amazon will ensure its ambitious AI buildout plans don’t conflict with climate and environmental impacts. With massive AI data center plans in fossil-fuel dependent places like Saudi Arabia and Virginia, or drought-vulnerable places like Mexico, without corresponding renewable or community investment, Amazon is setting itself up to fail meeting its own Climate Pledge, let alone the science-based climate targets that are needed from large companies.”
“Amazon’s current disclosures only account for the material emissions from approximately 3% of its retail sales,” said Parker Caswell, Climate and Energy Sr. Associate at As You Sow. “This significantly understates the Company’s true emissions, misleading investors and greatly diminishing the value of its disclosures.”
An additional proposal highlights how Amazon’s massive ecommerce and retail businesses make it a significant contributor to the global plastic pollution crisis.
“Our proposal asks Amazon to assess the risks of using non-recyclable flexible plastic packaging,” said Conrad MacKerron, Sr. VP at As You Sow. “Use of flexible plastic packaging, including pouches and sachets for food and beverage applications, has grown rapidly. Flexibles are usually made from several different kinds of plastic and so cannot be recycled in conventional recycling systems. Competitors like Target and Walmart have disclosed their use of flexible plastic and their intent to make all packaging recyclable by a specific date. Amazon has not.”
Although Amazon has been one of the top recipients of shareholder proposals for several years, in the majority of instances and to the frustration of investors, the company has remained reticent to engage with shareholders about their concerns and consistently opposes all ESG-related proposals submitted for its proxy. This remained true this proxy season.
Said, Ryan Gerety, Director of the Athena coalition, “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy, along with the rest of Amazon’s Board of Directors, still refuse to address serious concerns about the corporation, including its illegal interference with the rights of workers to unionize, refusal to address the injury crisis in its warehouses, failure to live up to its climate commitments amidst its data center boom, and provision of cloud computing to customers with demonstrated human rights violations and war crimes. Amazon executives and the Board, flanked by large Wall Street investors like Vanguard, can close their eyes to the company’s negative impacts—but the public and workers across all parts of the company certainly will not.”
CONTACT:
Susana McDermott
Director of Communications
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
201-417-9060 (mobile)
smcdermott@iccr.org
About the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) is a broad coalition of more than 300 institutional investors collectively representing over $4 trillion in invested capital. ICCR members, a cross-section of faith-based investors, asset managers, pension funds, foundations, and other long-term institutional investors, have over 50 years of experience engaging with companies on environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) issues that are critical to long-term value creation. ICCR members engage hundreds of corporations annually in an effort to foster greater corporate accountability. Visit our website www.iccr.org and follow us on LinkedIn, Bsky and X.
