Opinion: Amazon says it’s ‘Earth’s best employer.’ Locals not so sure
Activists in the Inland Empire recently got their hands on an internal Amazon memo that detailed the company’s political and community strategy for Southern California this year, a document that they shared with journalists who, in turn, trumpeted it as a “stark look” at the company’s efforts to “buy influence” and project power.
There’s a lot of hype in that, but the memo does not do Amazon any favors. It’s full of pablum and reeks of smugness — the author refers to the company, more than once, as “Earth’s Best Employer,” and calls its allies “Amazonians.”
Really?
The memo suggests that the company, for all its self-regard, has thin skin. It complains that after receiving donations from Amazon in 2022 and 2023, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts & Culture, part of the Riverside Art Museum, had the audacity to exhibit a local artist “who depicted an Amazon facility on fire.”
Earth’s best employer didn’t like that. “We will not donate to The Cheech,” the memo declares with all the haughty insecurity of an unclothed emperor.
But is any of this remarkable? Amazon is a major employer (sorry, not the best but certainly one of the biggest) with far-flung and sometimes very specific ambitions. It has every right to strategize about its future and to plan for it.
Susan Phillips, who directs the Redford Conservancy at Pitzer College and is a leading critic of the region’s warehouse boom, called the memo “totally unsurprising … and basically what we’ve known all along.” A very large company has interests and influence and seeks to use its influence to advance them.
Self-serving goals
More revealing, however, are the assumptions it incorporates: the unthinking acceptance of a worldview in which self-serving corporate behavior is sold as a social good.
It demonstrates, Phillips noted, that Amazon, like so many big and influential companies, believes that it is embracing “community engagement” when in fact it is practicing “manipulation.”
As she points out, the strategies that the memo outlines do not actually aim to engage the community in conversation about its future. Instead, Amazon seeks to use money and community contact to secure advantages — to head off labor organizing, to keep wages low, to build more warehouses.
The goals are not healthier or more prosperous places to live. They are fending off “reputational challenges” by doling out modest grants and backing supportive officials who are willing to carry out the company’s agenda.
Mind you, Amazon thinks that’s for the public’s own benefit. As the memo showed, Amazon sees its interests as commensurate with the region’s health — that what’s good for Amazon is good for Southern California.
It’s a “positive impact” when Amazon works to halt a warehouse moratorium for the Inland Empire, or when it influences alcohol advertising legislation, or promotes “proactive competition work” (see: pablum).
To be fair, those goals may sometimes be good for the public. But Amazon isn’t interested in them because they’re good for the public; it’s interested in what’s good for Amazon.
Messaging vs. solutions
Asked about the memo, company spokesperson Jennifer Flagg was prompt, polite and deflective. The memo, she said, should not be considered complete or approved but merely a leaked draft.
To the larger point of Amazon’s place in California, Flagg stressed its employment of more than 162,000 people, its investments in infrastructure and compensation and its charitable work — all of which are unchallenged and speak to the company’s commitment, if not necessarily its motives.
The disconnect between Amazon as a corporate entity and guardian of public trust comes through in the memo’s discussion of public concerns.
“Our customers in this region believe that homelessness is the overwhelming priority across the region,” the memo concludes, “as well as supporting children and families in poverty, and reducing hunger.”
Fair enough. Data supports that conclusion, and it seems intelligent of Amazon to note it.
But Amazon’s proposed strategy in the face of those concerns is to “increase … visibility,” to “hone language” and to make better and more frequent use of “the words ‘hunger,’ ‘homelessness’” in its corporate speech.
“Additionally,” the memo notes, “we will work with communications and PR to ensure our speeches, press releases, any external communication ties back to these topics.”
Amazon does not, however, propose to increase wages for those struggling families or those who may be hungry. To the contrary: “Pay continues to be a significant concern,” the memo states.
Instead, the company proposes to hone its messaging.
It’s not Amazon’s job to solve homelessness, but the company wants it both ways. It wants to be thought of as a partner to local governments, a beneficent corporate citizen here to help local electeds help their constituents. But it’s really here for itself — for its profits, its future, its warehouses and its sales.
Government allows it
Amazon’s communications and strategic investments may end up being good for the public, but that’s not the goal. The goal is Amazon’s image and the protection of its interests.
That is not engagement. It is, as Phillips put it, “corporate narcissism.”
Amazon is hardly alone in all of this. This is what happens when governments relinquish leadership to special interests. It’s neoliberalism and marketplace confidence at its worst, and it’s mostly shocking in that it fails to shock. It seems perfectly natural of Amazon to think of itself as an exemplar of what a community needs because government encourages it to do so.
It’s no great stretch for elected officials, especially those cultivated by the company, to think of it that way, too.
Government is supposed to sniff out special interests and think outside it — to do what’s best for the public, not just for those who stand to make money. It might be good for the Inland Empire to have more Amazon warehouses and the minimum-wage jobs they supply, but it might not. In fact, it might be that warehouses are crowding out other uses of land that might be better for the region.
Amazon’s strategy does not entertain those possibilities because, from its perspective, they are beyond consideration. And because of that, Amazon’s “community engagement” approach will not actually engage those questions.
Rather, they will steer and guide conversations toward answers that favor “Earth’s Best Employer.”
Jim Newton is a contributor to CalMatters. He worked at the Los Angeles Times for 25 years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist, covering government and politics.