Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has voiced his apprehension regarding Amazon’s substantial layoffs, viewing them as a disquieting omen for the future of employment worldwide.
Amazon.com Inc. announced on Tuesday its plan to eliminate approximately 14,000 corporate positions, a move that follows warnings from CEO Andy Jassy about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the company’s workforce.
Earlier reports from Reuters indicated that up to 30,000 Amazon employees might face job losses.
Sharing a post on X, Tharoor commented, “We are seeing the future, and it’s deeply worrying.” This statement was made in response to Amazon’s decision to cut thousands of jobs, marking the largest layoff event in the company’s history.
Tharoor was responding to a post by Shanaka Anslem Perera, who characterized the development as a pivotal moment for the global workforce.
Perera noted that the layoffs represent 10% of Amazon’s corporate staff of 350,000, affecting roles such as engineers, managers, cloud architects, and HR professionals, rather than warehouse or seasonal workers.
He further emphasized the significance of these cuts, stating, “The ‘safe’ jobs,” and pointed out that these layoffs exceed the 27,000 job reductions that occurred between 2022 and 2023.
Amazon’s Layoff Strategy Explained
The company’s decision is reportedly driven by a need to reduce costs and address what it terms ‘over-hiring’ that occurred during the pandemic-fueled demand surge.
Over the last two years, Amazon has been progressively reducing its workforce across various sectors, including devices, communications, and podcasting.
The layoffs were scheduled to commence on Tuesday.
Sources familiar with the matter indicate that the impact will be felt across departments such as Human Resources (known internally as People Experience and Technology or PXT), operations, devices and services, and Amazon Web Services.
Communicating Layoffs: Managerial Training
These sources also revealed that managers of affected teams underwent training on Monday to prepare them for communicating with employees about the layoffs.
Termination notices were reportedly expected to be issued starting Tuesday morning.
This latest wave of job cuts aligns with CEO Andy Jassy’s strategy to streamline operations by reducing what he has described as excessive “bureaucracy”.
Jassy also introduced an internal anonymous feedback channel to identify inefficiencies, which has already prompted over 450 process improvements within the company.
Back in June, Jassy had alluded to potential layoffs, citing Amazon’s increasing integration of artificial intelligence tools.