AMAZON.COM, INC. | Risk Report on Staffing

Status
Withdrawn
AGM date
Resolution details
Company ticker
AMZN
Lead filer
UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust
Resolution ask
Report on or disclose
ESG theme
  • Social
ESG sub-theme
  • Decent work
Type of vote
Shareholder proposal
Filer type
Shareholder
Company sector
Consumer Discretionary
Company HQ country
United States
Resolved clause
That shareholders of Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon or the Company) ask the Board of Directors to oversee the preparation of a report, at reasonable cost and omitting confidential and proprietary information, on the risks to the Company related to ensuring adequate staffing of Amazon’s business and operations, including risks associated with tighter labor markets, and how Amazon is mitigating or plans to mitigate those risks. The report should include a discussion of the extent to which Amazon relies on part-time, temporary and contracted workers in each of its three operating segments, and whether staffing considerations have affected any of Amazon’s decisions about strategy, such as expansion plans or entering new geographies or lines of business.
Supporting statement
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon faced staffing challenges. According to a June 2021 article in The New York Times, Amazon’s workforce management model was uneven and strained even before the coronavirus arrived. Pre-pandemic, about three percent of Amazon’s hourly workforce left each week, nearly two times the rate in the retail and logistics industries.1
The pandemic has intensified these pressures. Public attention has focused on the raft of employees voluntarily leaving jobs in 2021, dubbed The Great Resignation.2 The trend has been most acute among employees who worked in fields that had experienced extreme increases in demand due to the pandemic, such as tech and health
care.3 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3% of Americans quit their jobs in September 2021.4 Low-income workers’ wages are rising at their fastest rate since the Great Recession and employers struggle to fill positions.5 As one commentator noted, The low-wage service-sector economy is experiencing the equivalent
of ‘free agency’ in a professional sports league.6 Experts recommend that employers begin valuing the employee as a whole person, and not just as an ‘asset’ or resource to be used for financial gain to address labor market challenges.7 That advice appears to run counter to Amazon’s workforce management approach, which reportedly reflects Jeff Bezos’ view that a long-tenured workforce causes a march to mediocrity.8 Amazon now acknowledges its staffing-related challenges. In an October 2021 earnings call, CFO Brian Olsavsky stated that the Company’s increased staffing need has recently coincided with the shortage of available workers, particularly in the United States, adding to Amazon’s cost
structure.9 In his final letter to shareholders as CEO, Bezos admitted that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees – a vision for their success.10 But Amazon does not disclose enough information about its staffing to enable investors to assess how skillfully it is managing staffing pressures. For example, investors did not have sufficient data on Amazon’s workforce to interpret whether the Company’s 2020 hiring11 would expand the workforce or simply replace workers who had left. This proposal aims to fill that gap

How other organisations have declared their voting intentions

Organisation name Declared voting intentions Rationale
Kutxabank Gestion SGIIC SAU. For

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