Thousands of Amazon workers demand time off to vote
Thousands of Amazon tech workers Tuesday signed an internal petition urging the company to offer paid time off for its workforce to vote on or before Election Day.
While Amazon is the second largest employer in the country, with 1,372,000 U.S. workers including Whole Foods employees, it does not offer paid time off to participate in federal elections.
More than 1,500 Amazon tech workers added their support to the petition one hour after it was launched internally Tuesday morning. By noon PT, the petition had reached 3,243 supporters. The call is hosted on the company’s internal ticketing system, which is used by workers to submit requests and tasks to be completed on the job, like fixing bugs found on a website. It’s also used internally as a way for employees to submit requests for changes to company policies, like benefits.
“We are less than a month away from the 2020