For several years, Storebrand has been engaging with the global retailer Amazon.com on various aspects of human rights and labour. The rationale for the engagement was based on our assessment that there is a gap between the company's stated commitments in these areas, and its implementation of those commitments. We believe that this gap is a reputational and operational risk that the company should address.
Further action was taken in this engagement with Amazon.com during the first quarter of 2025.
On the voting front, Storebrand has been part of a group of investors seeking to file a shareholder proposal to be voted on at the upcoming Amazon.com annual general meeting (AGM). This proposal, which focused on the company's implementation of its own stated commitment to the principle of freedom of association of its workers, was co-filed in December 2024.
However, early this year, the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) granted Amazon’s request to exclude our proposal from the proxy, which means that the proposal will not go to a vote at the AGM. Based on current SEC decisions, it can be inferred that the SEC’s current position is that freedom of association is not permissible for a shareholder vote anymore under the new guidance, which is a change of direction from a precedent established a year ago by the SEC under the previous US federal government administration.
Within the same group of investors, we also collaborated early this year to issue a collective letter to two members of the board at Amazon.com. The letter documented our concerns regarding the decision that the company took this year in Canada, to close all its Quebec warehouses and end the jobs of approximately 1700 full-time and 250 part-time workers.
The company's actions followed recent unionization efforts by workers there that had resulted in the Laval, Quebec, warehouse becoming Amazon's first unionized warehouse in Canada. However, in a similar case, when Walmart shut down operations in Quebec shortly after workers obtained union certification, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2014, that the company had violated Canadian labour laws by taking this action.
In the letter to the Amazon board members, we highlighted the risks that these actions pose; to Amazon’s corporate brand reputation for respecting employee' freedom of expression and collective bargaining; and in turn to shareholder value.
So far, we have not received a response from the company on the issues raised in the investor letter.
