Amazon Set to Conduct Racial Equity Audit After Shareholder Pressure
Amazon has commissioned an independent “racial equity audit” that will analyze whether the way it conducts its business fuels racism and discrimination for its 1 million hourly workers.
Loretta Lynch, former US Attorney General and now a partner at law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, will lead the audit, Amazon said. The firm, which is the second-largest employer in the US, said it will release the findings publicly, but did not give a timeline.
“The focus of the audit will be to evaluate any disparate racial impacts on our nearly one million U.S. hourly employees resulting from our policies, programs, and practices,” Amazon said in a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Thursday.
The move comes after sustained shareholder pressure on Amazon to look into how its business practices could result in racial inequity.
And I’m sure that report will make for riveting reading. If Amazon cared about equity, racial or otherwise, they could just nix the 3 or 4 million they’re going to pay Paul, Weiss for this report and pay their workers a few extra pennies. For them, every dollar helps. The “shareholders” in this context presumably means BlackRock and Vanguard. That said, where the heck in my air purifier, huh, Amazon? It was supposed to arrive yesterday.