Amazon faced an unprecedented number of shareholder resolutions at its annual meeting on Wednesday. All of them failed, which is typical for shareholder meetings. Regardless, the high number of proposals reflect the increasing scrutiny Amazon faces as it spreads across industries.
Specific vote counts may still demonstrate substantial support for some resolutions when they are released in the coming days.
The 12 resolutions, all of which Amazon’s board opposed, spanned issues from the sale of facial recognition technology to governments to equal pay for male and female employees. Representatives of socially responsible investors and activist groups asked Amazon to produce reports on food waste, sexual harassment policies, and the sale of offensive products on its platform, as well as to incorporate sustainability and equity metrics into executive compensation, among other measures.
The most dramatic moment came during the presentation of a resolution backed by more than 7,600 Amazon employees asking for a plan to respond to climate change. Scores of shareholders dressed in white stood up while user experience designer Emily Cunningham invited CEO Jeff Bezos to hear the resolution in person on stage.
“I would like to ask for Jeff Bezos to come out on stage so that I can speak to him directly,” she said.
“Mr. Bezos will be out later,” said David Zapolsky, the company’s general counsel.
“Will he be hearing this speech?” Cunningham asked.
“I assume so,” Zapolsky replied.
(Following the meeting, Amazon spokeswoman Angie Quennell declined to comment on whether Bezos was in fact in the room for the shareholder proposals.)
The reason for Cunningham’s request: Employees observed after the meeting that at Amazon, if initiatives aren’t personally backed by a member of the “S-Team” — the 10 or so executives who report directly to Bezos — they stand little chance of moving forward. That was also the reasoning behind a resolution asking that sustainability metrics be integrated into executive compensation packages.
Amazon has announced several plans to reduce its carbon impact, including “Shipment Zero,” its plan to deliver 50% of all Amazon packages to customers with net zero carbon by 2030. The company also maintains that e-commerce and cloud computing inherently emit less carbon than personal shopping trips and on-premises data centers.
In her speech, Cunningham asked her employer to do more, faster.
“Speed is everything,” she said. “Without bold, rapid action, we will lose our only chance to avoid catastrophic warming. … Our home, planet Earth, not far-off places in space, desperately needs bold leadership. Jeff, all we need is your leadership.”
The comment appears to be a reference to the fact Bezos aspires to establish colonies in outer space through his personal rocketship company, Blue Origin.
When asked about climate change in the question and answer session, Bezos said the company is already trying hard.
“It’s hard to find an issue that is more important than climate change,” Bezos said. “There are a lot of initiatives underway, and we’re not done. We’ll think of more, we’re very inventive.”
Pressed again by a second questioner for a concrete date on which the company would reach carbon neutrality, Bezos deferred to Kara Hurst, the company’s head of worldwide sustainability. She said that Amazon is currently undertaking an inventory of carbon emissions across all its operations, which will include timelines for carbon reduction when it’s released later this year.
“The long term goal today remains a long term goal, but more to share later this year,” Hurst said.
Amazon announced its intention to compile the emissions inventory following a shareholder campaign by Calvert Research and Management, a socially responsible investment firm, which between 2011 and 2013 filed resolutions asking for more disclosure of climate risks.
In a press conference after the meeting, the employees announced plans to re-file the resolution last year.
Amazon became the target of environmental and social activists this year because of what they said was tepid engagement from the company on their concerns. For example, the company lacks an official human rights policy, which companies including Microsoft and PepsiCo have adopted.
“Amazon is lagging so far behind when it comes to policies and processes that would help them tackle these issues,” said Paloma Munoz Quick, director of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights, which represents pension funds, religious organizations, and socially responsible asset managers. “If you look at Apple, they’re much further ahead.”
In deciding to focus on Amazon, activist investors cite earlier successes at companies like Walmart, which has been raising wages and improving working conditions following many years of protests and appearances at annual shareholder meetings (though a tight labor market also helped).
“I think it changed how Walmart treated their workers,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has been trying to organize Amazon’s warehouse and grocery employees. “It gave them a voice. We had workers go to shareholder meetings and talk to shareholders about the things that were taking place inside the store, and that was a good thing.”
The UFCW’s pension fund is invested in Amazon, and the union supported several of the resolutions on this year’s proxy ballot.
Bezos himself is Amazon’s largest shareholder, owning 16% of the company. Vanguard holds 6.2%, mostly through its index funds, followed by the asset manager BlackRock at 5.2%.
