Amazon is cracking down on internal communication after surge in worker activism

'Last Friday, AECJ members used dozens of Amazon internal listservs to invite thousands of their colleagues to skip work in a mass sickout and instead attend a virtual panel discussion about Amazon warehouse working conditions and environmental policies. Although the invites to this event mysteriously disappeared from workers’ calendars and two organizers were fired for organizing a similar event the week prior, it went on as planned with more than 300 people attending virtually.

'With the new enforcement about these rules on email communications, employees say it will be impossible for workers to use listservs to mobilize their colleagues in a similar fashion.

'“Everyone seems to acknowledge (subtly or overtly) that this was in response to the employees getting fired and the sickout,” another Amazon employee told Recode. “I think part of what Amazon is trying to do is make average employees upset at AECJ because of this new inconvenience.”'

Original title too long; removed the word 'a': Amazon is cracking down on internal communication after a surge in worker activism

This is the same strategy of course that Google used to shut down a lot of it's activism. The solution, of course, is for tech workers to formally unionize and enjoy the legal protections and bargaining power than come with that.

Tech companies are basically now going through the exact same processes previous generations of corporations went through decades ago. It'll be interesting to see if they remain as wildly profitable and competitive once they're subject to the same amounts of regulation and scrutiny as their predecessors.