Overview
- The three Amazon engineers — Patrick Schloesser, Darius Irani and Liesl Wigand — filed a complaint with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights on Thursday saying the company opened investigations after they testified at City Council hearings.
- Each worker says they were separately summoned to meetings with Amazon Employee Relations in early June and told the probe could lead to discipline up to termination.
- Amazon said it respects colleagues’ right to voice opinions and that it enforces a corporate policy that bars speaking on behalf of the company without preapproval while it investigates possible violations.
- Seattle’s City Council unanimously enacted a one-year moratorium on new large-scale data centers on June 9 to study impacts on electricity, water, land use, public health and local costs.
- The complaint invokes a Seattle law that bars employers from discriminating over political beliefs or group membership and could shape both legal limits on corporate staff discipline and local rules for AI-driven data center buildouts.