Amazon’s Seattle campus | Photo: JORDAN STEAD / Amazon
Three months after several Pride posters were defaced in its Seattle head office, Amazon has spoken out on the issue to staff.
Earlier this year, unknown perpetrators defaced about 10 employee-designed posters promoting LGBTI diversity and inclusion over a two month period.
Amazon replaced the posters and sent out a memo telling staff, ‘posters are company property. Defacing posters is a violation of Amazon’s policy’.
At the time of vandalism, Amazon’s staff expressed their dissatisfaction to the company’s response to the incident.
According to reports on CNBC, some LGBTI staff said they did not feel safe at work.
‘I know people personally who came very close to quitting Amazon as a consequence of those defacements,’ a trans employee told CNBC.
Defacing is not ‘good’
But now, three months after the incident, Amazon’s Senior Vice President Beth Galleti has spoken out.
She sent an email to staff saying all employees should feel ‘supported by their fellow Amazonians’.
‘When individuals discriminate against others — be it by making a ‘joke,’ a passive comment, or by defacing a poster — not only is it against our policies, it is wrong,’ she wrote in the email.
‘All employees should be able to bring their authentic selves to work every day to serve our customers – no matter our gender (cis or trans), race, ethnicity, education, age, disability status, or cultural background – and be supported by their fellow Amazonians.’
Galetti sent the email only to employees in Seattle and did not explain the timing of the email.
It is unclear whether Amazon has caught the perpetrators.
