People walk past The Sphere in downtown Seattle, Washington on June 25, 2025.
Juan Mavromata | AFP | Getty Images
group of Amazon The engineers said they were being investigated by the company after criticizing its breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence data centers and calling for stronger government regulation.
Earlier this month, five Amazon employees testified before the Seattle City Council, seeking public input on a one-year moratorium on construction of new large data centers to give city officials time to regulate the projects. The City of Seattle unanimously passed the moratorium on June 9th.
Employees criticized tech companies’ massive AI spending, describing it as “building AI justified at every cost.”
After the hearing, the three Amazon employees were invited separately to Zoom meetings with human resources representatives who said they were looking into concerns raised about the testimony, according to a complaint filed Friday with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.
Employees were informed that the investigation could lead to disciplinary action, and one employee was told that disciplinary action could extend to termination, according to the complaint.
Amazon’s interrogations made the employees feel “fearful and uncertain about their future employment,” according to a complaint filed by lawyers representing the employees.
“They also learned that Amazon was monitoring their political advocacy on the Seattle City Council and was attempting to identify additional employees who engaged in political activity,” the complaint states.
The suit accuses Amazon of violating a Seattle ordinance that prohibits companies from discriminating against employees based on political ideology, race, religion or age.
Amazon previously told CNBC that the company respects the right of its colleagues to express their opinions.
Amazon spokeswoman Margaret Callahan said in a statement that the company does not allow employees to speak on Amazon’s behalf without going through certain formalities.
Callahan said that after investigating how the employees expressed themselves and how their comments were received, the company determined that the employees may have made the comments “in their capacity as Amazonians and not as private citizens.”
“Like other companies, we are investigating whether there have been any violations of our policies because we believe it is important to consistently apply our policies, and we have not determined whether we will take action based on what we find,” Callahan said in a statement.
Mr Callahan disputed that the company planned to lay off the employees or told them they were at risk of being laid off. She added that Amazon will not tolerate retaliation.
The staffers are members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of current and former employees who have repeatedly pressed the company on its climate change efforts, employee treatment and other issues.
The two employees who founded AECJ were fired by the company in 2020 for “repeatedly violating company policies” after publicly criticizing the company, including circulating a petition calling for stronger coronavirus protections for Amazon warehouse workers. Amazon reached a settlement with employees in 2021 after they filed complaints with federal labor regulators.
Most recently, the AECJ called on Amazon to be “more responsible” in its AI deployment and “understand the realities about the cost of AI and the necessary guardrails.”
Amazon has pledged to spend up to $200 billion in capital spending this year, primarily for AI infrastructure. At the same time, the company has laid off 30,000 employees since October as part of CEO Andy Jassy’s bid to transform Amazon into “the world’s largest startup company.”
AI data centers are the target of a growing backlash across the United States. A recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose building local AI data centers, with most respondents citing concerns about the facilities’ environmental impact and negative impact on quality of life.
Darius Irani, who has been an Amazon employee for more than five years, said in a statement that he does not regret what he said at the hearing.
“All I did was testify because I believe it’s important for the government to regulate data centers and AI,” Irani said. “Workers need to be part of these conversations.”
