Show identification, prove that you own shares with proxy documentation, go through a metal detector and sign in. That was what people who wanted to get into the Amazon.com Inc. annual shareholders meeting Thursday at the Seattle Art Museum had to do.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gave a presentation and the company announced it was severing ties with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a free-market lobbyist group that has gained attention for opposing the federal health care overhaul and most recently for its support of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. Many other corporations, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Kraft have all pledged to stop supporting ALEC.
Protesters outside SAM attempted to deliver boxes of petitions signed by 511,160 people asking Amazon to stop supporting ALEC — after the company announced it was no longer supporting the organization. The protesters attempting to deliver the boxes to Amazon were stopped by police.
For a slide show of images from the protest, click here.
The protest continued inside the meeting, as a disruptive crowd repeatedly interrupted the presentations and called out to board members and Bezos asking the company to pay its fair share of taxes and treat workers fairly.
Bezos attempted to change the subject by drawing attention to Amazon’s growth, push into digital media and customer satisfaction.
“When you take good care of customers, they want to do business with you,” Bezos said.
Bezos, who was sporting standard dressy Seattle attire – nice jeans, a button-up shirt and navy blue blazer – pointed to an 89 percent customer satisfaction level for the company and called the $79 Amazon Prime subscription service the “best bargain in the history of shopping.”
This year, shareholders were asked to vote on two proposals, both calling for transparency from the company. The first proposal asked that the company disclose its carbon footprint.
A shareholder in favor of the proposal said that Amazon has not responded to requests to sign on to the Carbon Disclosure Project, which other major tech companies have joined, despite being asked to do so for the past six years.
Amazon revealed that approximately 66 million shareholders had voted in favor of disclosing carbon emissions, 247 million voted against it and 42 million abstained. The numbers had not been finalized, but made it clear the proposal would not pass.
The other proposal asked the company to reveal its political contributions.
A shareholder in favor of that proposal accused the company of taking “cheap shot actions” like asking customers to spy on local retailers so Amazon could undercut their prices.
“That’s no way to build morale and recruit the best and the brightest,” said Bruce Herbert of Newground Social Investment, who presented the political contribution transparency request.
Amazon revealed that, like the climate change proposal, the call for political contribution transparency was unlikely to gain a majority of shareholder support. Approximately 79 million were in favor, 237 million were against and 44 million abstained from voting.
Amazon responded to criticism from shareholders and protesters that it pays only a little more than 2 percent in corporate taxes by saying that the reason the company has paid so little tax in the past few years is that it has been investing heavily in its products and services.
Outside the meeting, Sage Wilson of the organization Working Washington, which organized the protest, said Amazon’s strategy of seeking loopholes to avoid taxes wasn’t illegal, but suggested that Amazon and Bezos should be calling for an end to these kinds of loopholes, rather than exploiting them.
“Things like this, loopholes, they don’t just happen,” Wilson said. “Companies lobby to keep (the loopholes) open. If Jeff Bezos said we should end it, that would go a long way.”
Inside, protesting shareholders asked the company to be better to its employees and improve conditions at warehouses.
Bezos responded by saying that the company has spent $52 million retrofitting warehouses with air conditioning units. He showed a video of a helicopter delivering an air conditioning unit to a warehouse.
“We’re really leading the way here,” Bezos said.