Amazon is planning a racial equity audit of its workforce

Retail giant Amazon has hired a law firm to conduct a staffing audit focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, joining three other major US companies that recently launched racial equity audits. .

Amazon’s audit “will assess any disparate racial impact on our nearly one million U.S. employees per hour as a result of our policies, programs and practices,” the company said last week in a regulatory document. Former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who now works for New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, will lead the audit.

The announcement comes almost a year after Amazon shareholders began pushing the company to conduct a racial equity audit. In a formal audit petition filed last year, shareholders praised Amazon’s management for solid advances in diversity, but noted some notable cases of discriminatory hiring practices that portray the company in a negative light. , according to the document.

In one case, employee Charlotte Newman sued Amazon, alleging the company has an unfair pattern of “leveling up” black employees. According to the lawsuit, Newman, a black woman with a Harvard MBA, was interviewed for a senior manager job at Amazon, but was offered a job with a salary grade below the one she applied for, all and that she was qualified for the job of senior manager. He accepted the job anyway and was then asked to perform senior management duties, according to the lawsuit.

Amazon also started two years ago to fire a black man, Christian Smalls, who was protesting working conditions at a Staten Island warehouse. Smalls is now the president of the Amazon Workers Union.

“Because of the pattern and magnitude of the controversies that Amazon repeatedly faces, we believe it is in the best interest of shareholders that Amazon proactively identify and mitigate risks through an independent racial equity audit,” they said. shareholders at your request.

Amazon said it will publicly share the results of its audit, but did not say when the work will be completed.

Lack of minorities in senior management

While Amazon’s workforce statistics show that between 2018 and 2020, the company increased its black and Hispanic staff, most of that growth has occurred at the delivery driver and worker level. of warehouse. Less than 4% of Amazon’s top executives were black or Hispanic in 2020, according to the company’s latest data.

“We know that diversity, equity, and inclusion are important, and we recognize that the advancement of multiple employees begins with proactive hiring, retention, and development,” Amazon said in the presentation. “We believe that diversity and inclusion are good for business, and more fundamentally, just right.”

Tyson Foods, one of the world’s largest meat processing companies, announced last year that it would launch a racial equity audit. One of the company’s investors, American Baptist Home Mission Societies, boosted the audit, Bloomberg News reported.

Money manager BlackRock and Citigroup announced similar moves.