Amazon has commissioned a “racial equity audit” of safety data for warehouse employees, after facing shareholder pressure from one of the largest public pension funds in the United States.
The audit, which Amazon claims is intended to address “disparate racial impacts” for black and Latino workers, will be led by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, representing the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Amazon has not specified a timeline for the audit.
“We are committed to supporting and increasing diversity, and have committed to conducting and publicly releasing the results of a racial equity audit that will evaluate any disparate racial impacts on our nearly one million U.S. hourly employees resulting from our policies, programs, and practices,” said Amazon’s Board of Directors in a proxy statement. “We also have announced Company-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, and we provide extensive statistical reporting on our workforce diversity and pay equity.”
The immediate catalyst for this audit was pressure from Amazon shareholders. For the 2022 annual shareholders’ meeting, the New York State Common Retirement Fund called for a proposal to audit the company’s safety data in search of disparate impacts based on gender, ethnicity, and race.
Amazon responded that they had already commissioned the aforementioned Loretta Lynch-led audit, and recommended shareholders against voting for the proposal on the basis of redundancy. The New York State Common Retirement Fund expressed concern that Amazon’s audit would be insufficient, but noted that they would remain open to withdrawing the proposal if certain conditions were met by Amazon.
The group supported a similar motion at Amazon’s 2021 meeting, which failed narrowly with 44.2 percent of the shareholders’ vote even against the recommendation of the Board of Directors. This was considered anomalous at the time, as votes at these meetings tend to conform closely to the recommendations of the Board.
By proactively announcing its own audit, Amazon likely hopes to appease socially progressive and diversity-concerned investors. Whether the company’s internal measures will be sufficient will be seen at next month’s shareholder meeting, as the company makes its case more extensively to convince shareholders that they have taken measures to address concerns of racial and ethinc “inequity” in their workplaces.
