Amazon’s CEO defends return-to-office policy

Nov 06, 2024 06:15 AM - 1 month ago 38963

Andy Jassy said making labor return to the agency 5 days per week isn’t a ‘backdoor layoff.’

By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, user tech, crypto, societal media, and overmuch more. Previously, she was a writer and editor astatine MUO.

Nov 5, 2024, 11:15 PM UTC

An image showing Amazon CEO Andy Jassy connected a colorful background

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is pushing backmost connected claims that his return-to-office instruction was a “backdoor layoff.” In a transcript of an all-hands unit gathering seen by Reuters and CNBC, Jassy said the move “is very overmuch astir our civilization and strengthening our culture.”

In September, Amazon announced that it would start making labor return to the office 5 days per week starting January 2nd, 2025. The e-commerce elephantine antecedently required labor to activity successful the office 3 days per week. Some speculated that the five-day-per-week mandate is simply a “layoff successful disguise,” intended to push retired labor who couldn’t aliases wouldn’t make the afloat return.

“A number of group I’ve seen theorized that the logic we were doing this is, it’s a backdoor layoff, aliases we made immoderate benignant of woody pinch metropolis aliases cities,” Jassy said during the meeting, according to Reuters. “I tin show you some of those are not true. You know, this was not a costs play for us.” Amazon has laid disconnected more than 27,000 workers since 2022.

Recent reports suggest galore Amazon labor aren’t happy pinch the return to agency mandate, pinch immoderate moreover threatening to quit, according to a study from Fortune. Last month, hundreds of labor signed a letter successful protestation of comments from Amazon Web Services caput Matt Garman, who said “there are different companies around” for workers who don’t want to travel successful 5 days per week.