01 / Industry under examination

Amazon unlawfully fired climate and warehouse-safety activist Maren Costa

      Amazon
      2018–2020s
      Labor & Exploitation
      Archive: verified
      4/5 wildness
    

Maren Costa, a principal user-experience designer who joined Amazon in 2002, helped launch Amazon Employees for Climate Justice with Emily Cunningham in late 2018. The group pressed Amazon to adopt stronger climate commitments and refused an executive request in early 2019 to withdraw a shareholder resolution. In September 2019, Costa helped organize more than 3,000 Amazon employees for the Global Climate Strike and spoke publicly in Seattle about the company’s climate policies. Amazon warned that her participation violated its external-communications rules and could lead to termination.

On April 11, 2020, Amazon fired Costa after she amplified warehouse workers’ safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic and said she would match donations to workers organized through Amazonians United. Costa filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, which found the termination unlawful. Amazon did not admit wrongdoing, but agreed to a settlement covering Costa’s lost wages and was required to post company-wide notices affirming employees’ rights to organize. The settlement amount was not specified in the supplied source, while the case became part of broader scrutiny of Amazon’s treatment of employee activists.

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Amazon unlawfully fired climate and warehouse-safety activist Maren Costa

Archive Record · 2018–2020s

03 / The Archive

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Labor & Exploitation2010s

Chinese authorities detained student activists supporting Jasic workers’ union drive

Jasic Technology and Jasic Workers Solidarity Group

In 2018, workers at Jasic Technology’s plant in Shenzhen, China, cited low pay and poor working conditions while attempting to establish a union independent of the state-controlled labor system. The effort drew support from students and Marxist activists, including Peking University graduate Yue Xin, who joined the Jasic Workers Solidarity Group on 8 August 2018. The dispute exposed the limits of China’s economic liberalization when workers challenge official labor structures and politically connected authorities. On 23 August 2018, Chinese police arrested Yue and roughly 50 members and supporters of the group. The organization said in January 2019 that Guangdong police had forced Yue and four others to record videos confessing to “illegal acts” and claiming they had been “brainwashed by radical organizations”; China’s National Security Department reportedly showed the videos to other activists. Yue was not publicly seen afterward, although Photon Media reported in August 2023 that she had been released and was working while volunteering with a library-related NGO. The detentions and alleged coerced confessions became an international example of Chinese authorities suppressing labor organizing and left-wing student activism.

Archive: verified ↗

Labor & Exploitation1890s–1908

Elder Dempster’s Congo shipping network exposed a forced-labor extraction system

Elder Dempster shipping line and Congo Free State

While working as a clerk for Elder Dempster in the 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel examined the company’s shipping records for its Antwerp–Boma route. He found that vessels sent to the Congo Free State carried guns, chains, explosives, and other military supplies, while return voyages were loaded with rubber and ivory. The stark imbalance led Morel to conclude that King Leopold II’s colonial administration was extracting resources through forced labor and violence. Historian Adam Hochschild later summarized the disparity as imports from Europe being worth roughly one-fifth of the value of goods shipped out of the Congo, with the difference imposed on the Congolese population. Morel said Elder Dempster executives responded by offering him an overseas promotion and then a consultancy in exchange for silence; he rejected both offers and left in 1901. As a journalist, he published the evidence, founded the Congo Reform Association in 1903, and worked with British consul Roger Casement, whose 1904 report documented abuses. A 1905 commission appointed by Leopold substantially confirmed the allegations. Sustained public and diplomatic pressure culminated in Belgium annexing the Congo Free State in 1908, although abuses continued and Morel’s campaign remained active until 1913.

Archive: verified ↗

Labor & Exploitation1980s–2010s

Former child actress alleged sexual abuse on Hey Dad..! set; Robert Hughes convicted in 2014

Hey Dad..!; Robert Hughes; Australian television production

Sarah Monahan, who played Jenny Kelly on the Australian sitcom Hey Dad..! from 1986 to 1993, said in March 2010 interviews with Woman’s Day and A Current Affair that actor Robert Hughes sexually abused her while she was a child performer. Hughes denied the allegations and said he had engaged defamation lawyers. In a March 2011 television interview, Monahan also alleged that television executives knew about Hughes’s conduct and failed to act, though the supplied source does not establish those executives’ identities or a separate finding against them. Hughes was arrested in London on 9 August 2012, and Australia’s extradition request was approved on 28 September 2012. In early April 2014, he was found guilty of sexually abusing young girls. Monahan subsequently campaigned for child-actor protections and sexual-assault victims, joined advocacy efforts including Bravehearts and A Minor Consideration, and supported an Australian sex-offender registry. The case became a prominent example of the vulnerability of child performers and the consequences of alleged institutional failures on a television set.

Archive: verified ↗

Labor & Exploitation2000s

DynCorp Contractor Won Unfair-Dismissal Case After Reporting Alleged Sex Trafficking by UN Police Personnel

DynCorp International; Kathryn Bolkovac

In 1999, former Lincoln Police Department investigator Kathryn Bolkovac signed with DynCorp Aerospace, a British subsidiary of U.S.-based DynCorp International, to work as a human-rights investigator in Bosnia and Herzegovina. DynCorp held a $15 million UN-related contract to recruit and train police officers there. Bolkovac reported that fellow DynCorp personnel were paying for prostitutes, raping underage girls, and participating in sex trafficking. Her allegations implicated an accountability gap: UN contractors had immunity from prosecution in Bosnia, while local participants could be prosecuted. After Bolkovac raised the allegations, DynCorp dismissed her and claimed she had falsified time sheets. In July 2001 she filed an unfair-dismissal action in Great Britain; on August 2, 2002, a tribunal unanimously ruled in her favor. Madeleine Rees, then the regional head of office for the UN human-rights commissioner, testified on Bolkovac’s behalf. In November 2002, an employment tribunal ordered DynCorp to pay £110,221 in damages. Some implicated officers reportedly resigned or left Bosnia, but the U.S. government continued its contract with DynCorp. The case later became the subject of the 2010 film The Whistleblower and a 2011 nonfiction book, keeping contractor oversight and sexual exploitation in peacekeeping operations under scrutiny.

Archive: verified ↗

Labor & Exploitation2018–2020s

NLRB Found Amazon Unlawfully Fired Climate-Justice Organizer Emily Cunningham

Amazon; Emily Cunningham; Amazon Employees For Climate Justice

Emily Cunningham, an Amazon user-experience designer who joined the company in 2013, helped lead Amazon Employees For Climate Justice in pressing the company to address its carbon emissions. In late 2018, she organized an employee-shareholder proposal seeking a climate initiative. Cunningham, Maren Costa, and other employees met with Amazon leadership in January 2019; Amazon announced a carbon-offset plan in February and asked the employees to withdraw their proposal. At the May 2019 annual shareholder meeting, Cunningham personally urged CEO Jeff Bezos to support the resolution, which shareholders rejected. Amazon terminated Cunningham in April 2020. She filed an unlawful-termination charge with the National Labor Relations Board, which determined that Amazon’s action violated labor law. Amazon denied wrongdoing but reached a settlement with Cunningham and the NLRB. The company was required to pay back wages—the supplied source does not specify the amount—and post notices in its offices and warehouses stating that employees cannot be discharged for organizing. The case became a documented example of retaliation allegations arising from internal employee activism over corporate climate policy.

Archive: verified ↗

Labor & Exploitation1970s–1980s

Kerr-McGee plutonium workers became whistleblowers after contamination findings

Kerr-McGee plutonium plant; Karen Silkwood and Dusty Ellis

In 1974, laboratory analyst Dusty Ellis and coworker Karen Silkwood worked at Kerr-McGee’s plutonium plant in Crescent, Oklahoma. After both women tested positive for plutonium contamination, they became activists campaigning for safer working conditions. Silkwood underwent intensive testing at Los Alamos, New Mexico, on November 10–11, 1974; the source says her contamination was substantially worse than Ellis’s. Silkwood died in a car crash on November 13, 1974, while investigating conditions at the plant, turning the workplace-safety dispute into a major criminal and civil controversy. Ellis refused a company payment offered in exchange for dropping complaints and continued protesting after Silkwood’s death. In 1975, she was arrested after climbing the plant’s exterior wall with a shotgun and received one year of probation after pleading guilty to forcible entry. Her account and Silkwood’s case later became the basis of the 1983 film Silkwood, while Ellis received $67,500 for use of her likeness. The episode remains a prominent example of the dangers faced by nuclear-industry whistleblowers and the difficulty of securing accountability after alleged radioactive contamination.

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