#Ex Amazon VP who called company ‘chickens–t’ says it should be split up

A former high-ranking Amazon engineer who quit last month in protest of the company’s treatment of its warehouse workers is calling for it to be broken up.

Speaking at a virtual meeting held by the Global Amazon Union Alliance, Tim Bray said that the e-commerce juggernaut has its hands in too many industries and that “aggressive” antitrust legislation must be passed in order to split it up.

“Why on earth should an online retailer, a cloud computing company, a smart speaker company, an organic supermarket company and a video production company all be conglomerated into one corporate entity controlled by one person?” Bray asked, according to Business Insider.

He said that AWS — Amazon’s cloud computing arm which is the biggest cloud provider in the world and a major driver of revenue for Amazon — should not be used to bankroll Amazon’s crushing of “whole sectors of the retail economy.”

“AWS should be an independent company that reports profits and pays taxes on profits,” he added.

Bray’s remarks come a month after he made waves by publishing a blog post after quitting where he called Amazon “chickens–t” for firing dissenters in an effort “designed to create a climate of fear.”

He said that listening to worker accounts of what life is like in Amazon’s warehouses during the coronavirus pandemic was difficult to stomach, and that he “snapped” when they fired the activists.

“Remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised,” he said. “So I resigned.”

Leaving when he did, Bray said, meant abandoning nearly $1 million in salary and vesting shares.

Shares of Amazon were down 3 percent Thursday afternoon, at $2,567.02.