Amazon Workers Say Data Center Testimony Prompted HR Calls

Three Amazon.com Inc. workers say the company violated a Seattle ordinance by interrogating them after they testified in favor of regulation of data centers in the city.

Darius Irani, Patrick Schloesser and Liesl Wigand, members of an employee group that has pushed the company to prioritize environmental matters, spoke earlier this month at public hearings before Seattle legislative committees then considering a moratorium on new large-scale data center construction in the city. The city council subsequently unanimously enacted a one-year pause on new data centers while Seattle reviews their impact.

The following week, all three workers were separately called to Zoom meetings with an Amazon human resources staffer who said he was investigating a concern that had been raised about their public testimony, lawyers for the three said in a letter sent Thursday to the Seattle Office for Civil Rights. They were each told the investigation could lead to discipline. One was told that could include termination.

Amazon subjected the employees to “a workplace investigation and required them to attend investigatory meetings in which they experienced intimidation and surveillance during their workday,” the letter said.

Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, said employees were free to talk about their working environment, but the company restricts personnel from speaking as representatives of the company.

“As we looked more closely at how these employees represented themselves, and how their comments were received by others, it became clear that they may have been speaking in their capacity as Amazonians and not as private citizens,” she said in an email. “We believe it’s important to apply our policies consistently so, just as we would with anyone else, we’re investigating whether there was a violation of our policies and may or may not take action based on what we find.”

The proliferation of data centers to power artificial intelligence products has made the buildings a public policy flashpoint, with critics raising concerns about their electricity and water consumption.

Those critics include Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the organization that the three employees are affiliated with. The group has campaigned for years to get Amazon to prioritize environmental issues. Amazon fired two of its leaders in 2020 for what it said were violations of company policy, after the workers sought to highlight the safety demands of warehouse personnel during the pandemic.

There is “no question that Amazon initiated disciplinary investigations into the Discriminatees because they gave public comment before the Seattle City Council in favor of data center regulation,” lawyers for the group said in their complaint. The trio are requesting an investigation by the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, which enforces laws against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

“They testified on their own time based on publicly available information and made no mention of their employer,” the letter says.

Amazon is the largest private employer in Seattle, where it has its corporate headquarters.

Top photo: The Amazon headquarters in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. Amazon.com Inc. is cutting 16,000 corporate jobs in an effort to remove layers of bureaucracy and “increase ownership,” becoming the latest company to target managers for layoffs in recent years. Bloomberg.