SAN FRANCISCO (USA Today) – Animal rights activists, labor groups, environmentalists and transit riders were lined up near Seattle’s Space Needle Wednesday as Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting took place.
Inside, the Rev. Jesse Jackson took the e-commerce giant to task for its poor record of hiring women and minorities.
In response, Amazon’s senior vice president for corporate affairs Jay Carney pledged to release Amazon’s diversity numbers yearly, said Butch Wing, a spokesman for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Amazon first released information about the gender and racial makeup of its workforce in 2014.
In a letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos compared the company’s position to being in a plural marriage, with the company “wed” to three profitable and growing businesses: Marketplace (for third-party sellers), Prime and AWS, Amazon’s web service division.