Amazon agrees to racial equity audit, taps former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to probe its workforce

Amazon Inc. will be conducting an independent racial equity audit, and this will be led by former US attorney general Loretta Lynch. She will be probing the “disparate racial impacts” in the company’s workforce.

As per CNBC, Amazon is carrying out this probe as it faces strong pressure from its shareholders. The e-commerce giant officially joins other American companies such as Tyson Foods and Citigroup Inc. with its agreement to the said audit.

It was explained that this type of audit is an examination of companies to determine if their businesses caused and allowed discrimination in the workplace to continue. Former attorney general Lynch who is also a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP law firm, will be handling the investigation, as announced by Amazon late last week.

The racial equity audit at Amazon will be done on hourly workers. The decision for the probe comes after the company’s stakeholders urged the management to be more transparent on how its policies affect equity, diversity, and workplace inclusion in the office.

Moreover, in the recent securities filing, Amazon stated that its independent probe will assess “any disparate racial impacts on our nearly one million U.S. hourly employees resulting from our policies, programs, and practices.”

Jeff Bezos’ company also promised to share the results of the audit with the public. However, it did not mention any expected date for the completion of the probe. The shareholders have been urging Amazon to launch a racial inequities review for a while now and finally, the management has granted the request.

“Amazon has taken some measures to address racial justice and equity, including committing financial resources and publishing workforce diversity data,” part of the shareholder proposal for the audit reads. “However, Amazon faces controversies, some significant, that pose various risks and raise questions related to the company’s overall strategy and the company’s alignment with its public statements.”

The Financial Times reported that Amazon’s audit will not include its subsidiaries such as Whole Foods. Finally, the racial equity probe stemmed from the call for major companies to act on the issues regarding civil rights in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.