Amazon shareholders demand respect for workers’ rights

More than 20 global investors have filed a shareholder proposal urging Amazon’s board of directors to assess its commitments to respecting their workers’ rights ahead of their annual general meeting on 22 May. 

Their proposal calls for Amazon to appoint a third party to assess how Amazon’s actions align with its policies to respect international human rights laws, amid recent unionisation efforts at Amazon following media reports alleging intimidation and retaliation.

In the UK, Amazon has been accused of anti-union practices by the GMB Union at their Coventry fulfilment centre. 

Peter Hugh Smith, chief executive of CCLA Investment Management, one of the investors supporting the proposal, said: “At CCLA, we continue to be concerned that Amazon’s reported conduct towards employees seeking to unionise contradicts its stated commitment to respecting its employees’ fundamental rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining as articulated in the UN Global Principles for Business and Human Rights and the ILO Declaration and Core Conventions”.

Amazon said in a response: “We respect the rights of our employees to form, join, or not to join a labour union or other lawful organisation of their own selection, without fear of reprisal, intimidation, or harassment, and our policies and practices protect these rights”.

The company said that the request for third-party assessment, the second such request in two years, is “unnecessary in light of our policies and practices respecting freedom of association and collective bargaining rights and the regulatory oversight of these policies and practices that already exists”.

CCLA is the UK’s largest charity fund manager, working with churches, charities and local authorities. They launched their Catholic investment fund in 2021 and established the faith-consistent investment committee to inform their investment approach, which acts in alignment with Catholic Social Teaching.

Hugh Smith has addressed the importance of Catholic Social Teaching, stating that it “leads us to investigate rigorously the impacts on human beings and labour standards”.

“We believe that investment markets and the companies that are traded on them, can only be as healthy as the communities that support them,” he said.

Hugh Smith told The Tablet that his Catholic upbringing and education have influenced how the business engages with the companies that they invest in, prioritising ethical investment that is “in line with our clients’ ethics and perspectives”. He said that “the common good is sustained by people and communities, uniting to work together and uphold human dignity”. 

Martin Buttle, Better Work Lead of CCLA, said that a main concern is Amazon’s internationally documented criticism “for their approach to recognising trade unions and the right of workers to collectively bargain”.

“We want to see Amazon publish an independent report so we can identify the extent to which these allegations are true,” he said.

Sarah Couturier-Tanoh, director of shareholder advocacy at SHARE, the Shareholder Association for Research and Education which has led the proposal, said that “effective and transparent due diligence is needed to reassure shareholders when repeated allegations of misconduct arise”.

She continued: “In the past couple of years we have seen global investors taking stances in favour of better labour relations to mitigate shareholder risks”.

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