“Amazon has reportedly fired over half a dozen senior managers who were involved in a New York warehouse union,” reports the Guardian, noting that the firings happened shortly after the Staten Island warehouse successfully voted to union, and that they occurred “outside the company’s employee review cycle.”

And while an Amazon spokesman attributed the move to the company’s culture of continual improvement, the Guardian also notes that “Most of the managers who were fired were responsible for carrying out Amazon’s response to the unionization efforts, the New York Times reported.”

This week Amazon did defeat a second warehouse’s unionization vote. But Salon reports that “In a potentially far more significant development, a coalition of the nation’s largest public pension funds, with billions of dollars in Amazon stock, is urging shareholders to take the battle to Amazon’s corporate suite.”
[T]he coalition of large public pension funds is urging shareholders to confront Amazon’s corporate leadership by voting out a pair of board directors who oversee Amazon’s workplace and compensation policies at the upcoming May 25 shareholder meeting….

The national effort is being led by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a pair of Democratic elected officials who preside over hundreds of billions in public pensions funds. The New York City Retirement System and New York State Common Retirement Fund hold 1.7 million shares of Amazon stock valued at approximately $5.3 billion. At an April 21 conference at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, several other elected state treasurers from around the country committed to joining in the effort….

According to the organizers of the Harvard Club pension fund event, the officials in attendance were collectively responsible for managing $2 trillion in investments.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Amazon Fired Six Managers After Union Vote – but Large Shareholders Plan Confrontation with Board