Two Amazon software engineers appeared at a Seattle city council hearing on Wednesday, June 4, 2026, to publicly demand regulations on new data centers — a move labor organizers say is the first time Big Tech employees have explicitly and publicly called for such oversight.
Senior software engineer Liesl Wigand and engineer Patrick Schloesser, both members of the worker collective Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, addressed elected officials directly. “Local governments, in collaboration with community stakeholders, should be setting the terms for data center buildout,” Wigand said. “Let’s not let Big Tech burn Seattle to win the AI race.”
Schloesser, who has been at Amazon for nearly six years, called for data centers to supply more renewable energy than they consume, provide power storage to support the broader electricity grid, and face new taxes on tech companies. He also proposed “worker-led safety committees that report to the city” to flag AI tools that pose risks. Schloesser argued that tech companies’ urgency to build data centers gives Seattle leverage to extract concessions from them.
The hearing comes as Seattle officials weigh a one-year pause on issuing data center permits to allow time to establish regulations. The city currently has no rules specific to data centers, though several companies have expressed interest in large-scale developments. Officials have warned these projects could raise water and power prices for residents and increase carbon emissions.
The broader context involves hundreds of billions of dollars in planned data center spending across the US to support demand for AI technologies. Communities in nearly every state have organized against such projects, citing concerns over electricity and water use, toxic waste, noise, emissions, and tax breaks.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said additional members may speak at further city hearings on the pause ordinance. Amazon did not comment in time for publication. Microsoft and Google have recently moved to strengthen transparency and environmental commitments around their own data center projects.
Source: WIRED