/ Andy Jassy said making employees instrumentality to the bureau 5 days per week isn’t a ‘backdoor layoff.’
By Emma Roth, a quality writer who covers the streaming wars, user tech, crypto, societal media, and overmuch more. Previously, she was a writer and exertion astatine MUO.
Nov 5, 2024, 11:15 PM UTC
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is pushing backmost connected claims that his return-to-office mandate was a “backdoor layoff.” In a transcript of an all-hands unit gathering seen by Reuters and CNBC, Jassy said the determination “is precise overmuch astir our civilization and strengthening our culture.”
In September, Amazon announced that it would start making employees instrumentality to the office 5 days per week starting January 2nd, 2025. The e-commerce elephantine antecedently required employees to enactment successful the office 3 days per week. Some speculated that the five-day-per-week mandate is simply a “layoff successful disguise,” intended to propulsion retired employees who couldn’t oregon wouldn’t marque the afloat return.
“A fig of radical I’ve seen theorized that the crushed we were doing this is, it’s a backdoor layoff, oregon we made immoderate benignant of woody with metropolis oregon cities,” Jassy said during the meeting, according to Reuters. “I tin archer you some of those are not true. You know, this was not a outgo play for us.” Amazon has laid disconnected more than 27,000 workers since 2022.
Recent reports suggest galore Amazon employees aren’t blessed with the instrumentality to bureau mandate, with immoderate adjacent threatening to quit, according to a study from Fortune. Last month, hundreds of employees 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 privation to travel successful 5 days per week.