Every year, Amazon’s shareholders meeting offers activists a chance to get the ear of one of the world’s richest, most powerful executives, Jeff Bezos.
This year, Amazon shareholders submitted three proposals for investors to vote on. One wanted the company to produce a sustainability report, including its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Another wanted the company to share more information about its political spending. The third, from the nonprofit group SumOfUs, wanted Amazon to analyze its operations and supply chain for any potential human rights violations. For example, whether any slave labor is used to make products sold through Amazon.
“A lot of companies have put in place human rights policies where they identify abuses and are on the lookout for abuses either in their supply chain or operations or both and we asked Amazon to do both of these,” said SumOfUs Senior Shareholder Advocacy Manager Lisa Lindsley
That measure failed, but Lindsley says it was encouraging that this year 23 percent of shareholders voted in favor compared with 5 percent last year.
Amazon urged investors to vote against it, saying the company already takes a number of steps to make sure its own workers and workers employed by its suppliers are treated fairly.
The other two shareholder measures also failed to pass.
