A group of Amazon (AMZN  ) employees recently used shareholder rights to make their voices heard and draw attention to issues of contention or concern. They collectively filed uniform shareholder petitions that pushed Amazon to take action regarding climate change, exerting pressure on the company to develop a green ethic in a way that does not harm their own position in the business.

Their petitions called for the reduced usage of fossil fuels. It will be decided upon next spring and could be a channel through which activist investors and employees band together to evoke change if passed.

"We realized we could use our position as employees and our power and our rights as shareholders to bring visibility of this issue to the board and the top leaders of this company," said Eliza Pan, a program manager at Amazon who is one of the employees signing the proposal.

Employees must own at least $2000 in stock to have such active power.

"Amazon's shipping business runs on diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel. Some data centers are still coal-powered," the petition states. Amazon does not reveal specifics about its carbon footprint but it has been stipulated that it may match "the equivalent of nearly five coal-fired power plants."

The move brings a bigger issue to light: the notion that companies need to start catering to the demands of their employees in order to avoid mass movements or campaigns, such as when 20,000 Google (GOOGL  ) workers walked off the job earlier this month to protest sexual assault allegations that the company failed to efficiently handle. It puts into perspective how companies conventionally deal with employee demands and ethics, and how that contributes to overall corporate culture.

In fact, this week, Salesforce said it would institute a "chief ethical and humane use officer" put in place "to develop a strategic framework for the ethical and humane use of technology across Salesforce."

"Tech workers feel they are special, in part because they are so in demand, in part because their employers treat them that way. They also feel that some of their identity is tied up with the image of the company where they work, so it really does hurt them when that image gets tarnished." said Peter Cappelli at The Wharton School, elaborating on where tech workers draw their power from.

Given that there is such high demand for tech workers, and they form an integral part of Silicon Valley's tech apparatus, companies need to put more stock into what their workers say.