Leaked messages show Amazon will force a ‘voluntary resignation’ on employees failing to relocate near their team ‘hubs’::undefined

  • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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    1 year ago

    Amazon started enforcing its so-called “return-to-hub” policy in recent weeks, according to an internal email and Slack messages obtained by Insider. Hubs are the central locations assigned to each individual team — employees will have to work out of those hubs instead of any office nearest to their current city.

    Amazon assigned offices for most individual employees, but not the whole team. Some employees told Insider that made office work pointless because many still had to use video calls to connect with their teammates spread across the country.

    Why does Amazon even bother to do this? Why force their employees back to office if they’ll going to work remotely with their distributed team anyway? Why not save money on office space by letting those employees to work from their home?

    • azdood85@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They bought a ton of real estate over the years.

      Then places like Seattle were literally falling a part without the added cash cow of commuters stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for 16 hours of a workday.

    • SocializedHermit@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why not save money on office space by letting those employees to work from their home?

      Because they can’t control them at home.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve never felt more under control by the company I worked for than when my team was all on a Slack channel even though we were all WFH.

  • trainsaresexy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I understand the value of working in an office, but I wish our society would choose to pursue improving the quality of our lives instead of increasing productive capacity. It’s never enough. These companies always want more.

    We can do our jobs just fine, even great, at home. But they want to squeeze everything out of their workers.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not about the benefits of going to an office. It’s all about corporate realestate. Companies and rich people have a lot of money invested in office buildings and they are all losing value.

      • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There are also huge swathes of middle managers who cannot justify the existence of their job if all the peasants are free to work from wherever. Who’s gonna judge you for being 3 minutes late and not in dress code as you sit and type?

  • TIEPilot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I had this exact thing happen to me, they wanted me to move from a tax free state to LA. I said no and they came back we promised your position to another employee. I said ok I need at least a 50% raise to counter the cost of living and taxes. They balked and thought they could push me into it. I stood my ground to stay in my current position and they had to fire me, which looks bad on them as I had no infractions.

    I collected, didn’t have to pay back my relocation (over 20k) and had a job that I pushed off until near end of unemployment. Thanks for the free long vacation! I went to China and HK (this is before the chaos) for a few months

  • LoveSausage@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I WFH permanantly , for a company named after a river. They can’t do that to me , why? Because I live in Europe were we have unions and collective bargaining. That’s the only difference , and it makes a big difference.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    they all employ the same consultants, shouldn’t be long until we see a version of this from the others

    • Kernal64@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s well past time for all workers to unionize. The corpos are only getting worse and we need to organize to protect ourselves.

  • malloc@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    My work place is doing something similar. RTO (return to office) by some date near the end of the year. Failure to comply will result in some penalty or termination.

    I don’t understand it. WFH has proved to be the same if not more productive than working in some stupid office. Company revenues and profits at highest point ever.

    What’s even more fucking stupid is that the company is retiring some of their real estate in an attempt to save on costs yet they push this forced RTO.

    The email they sent out was also a fucking joke — citing “tO pReSeRvE oUr UnIqUe CuLtUrE” bullshit that I have seen at other companies. It’s like they all hire the same PR firm to do their copywriting.

    Makes you wonder if these executives are also well invested in corporate real estate. Thus the push towards RTO across the board.

  • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I feel like I need to point out the obvious an awful lot lately, but it’s not voluntary if it’s forced. They’re trying to get out of paying severance and unemployment. Do not comply!

  • xodoh74984@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Sounds like the solution is to say, “Yes,” then never show up onsite. Make them fire you, so you’re entitled to unemployment benefits and any severance.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You don’t even have to say yes. Just refuse to relocate it, and when they say you have to resign, just don’t.

      But if 50% resign because they think they have to, that’s 50% less unemployment Amazon has to pay

      • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You just say “no. And then explain the actual situation in the interview.

        And no engineering job I’ve ever applied for has had me fill out an “application”. That’s not a thing. And if some place weirdly has it, then send your resume somewhere else.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You know how a lot of job applications say something like “Have you ever been fired?”. That is a pretty strong filter.

        Constructive dismissal isn’t the same thing as being fired for cause, regardless of whether Amazon tries to lie about it.

          • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            I think you’re really blowing this out of proportion as if this is the scary “permanent record” teachers used to warn you about in elementary school.

            Explaining that they needed you to relocate and you weren’t willing is a satisfactoy answer. Additionally there’s no requirement that you put Amazon on your resume if it did come down to that. Frankly I don’t think the new employer would really care what happened between you and some other corporation if you seem competent and they aren’t going to check every reference on every single person that applies to a corporation with 100k+ employees to stop you from getting an interview first.

              • Album@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                At this point every hiring manager out there is aware of Amazon’s terrible workplace practices. Put on the resume don’t say you got fired. When you get asked why you left, tell the truth of the situation. Some managers won’t want you because if it sure, but the intelligent ones can see the tree through the forest and those are the places you want to work anyway.

                It’s sub optimal but that’s what happens when you join a place like Amazon.

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Have you ever been fired?

        Lie. They lie to you, you lie to them. They’re not the government. The worst they can do is fire you if they ever found out, which they won’t.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No. The solution is to call their bullshitnout.

      A company can’t hire you to work from one location (regardless if it’s WFH or not,) and then unilaterally decide to have you relocate.

      “You can apply internally” or anything else that is a new contract doesn’t matter. They’re changing the terms of employment, and they can’t do that unilaterally.

      The choices are to agree with their new terms, accept the “out” of taking another position in your area, or reject them. They can use what ever semantics they want, but it’s still a layoff.

      • evatronic@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        A company can’t hire you to work from one location (regardless if it’s WFH or not,) and then unilaterally decide to have you relocate.

        In the use US, with at-will employment, they absolutely can. Terminating someone for not relocating is absolutely legal. And, barring contract or law to the contrary, severance is not required.

        This state of things are what happens when you remove unions from the workforce, and why companies like Amazon absolutely flip their shit when union talk starts.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well, yes. But then they trigger unemployment. The can’t here is that they’re trying to avoid that.

          In the us, you have to pay unemployment if they’re not terminated for cause. And refusing to locate is not an “acceptable” cause, so it comes to be an at-will termination (ie “we’re firing you because we can.”)

          Also, the jobs they’re talking about usually come with severance packages. It’s not the warehouse gig workers

          • evatronic@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            This is true.

            Qualifying for Unemployment Insurance benefits is a decision made by the State, not the employer, and the standard for qualification is much lower than the one used to determine if terminating an employee is legal or not. That is, there are many things that will get you UI benefits that are still perfectly legal reasons to fire someone, as you said.

            As an aside, UI is an insurance product sold (forcibly, by the State) to the employer. The employer pays a premium which rises or falls based on the number and cost of claims that employer generates. Naturally, employers are incentivized to reduce the number of claims to keep costs low, but it’s not, as is commonly thought, the employer paying benefits directly.

            As another side, a strategy companies are using lately to keep their UI costs low is providing a severance package that pays all or part of the employee’s salary but paying it out over time. Depending on the state and the rules for that state’s UI program, that often counts against any UI benefit the former employee would receive, reducing the weekly benefit (sometimes to $0). It’s a thing I’ve only seen in the past 5 or so years. I would expect States to start to recognize this end-run around the system and adjust the rules accordingly in the near future.

  • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Can anyone post the full text? The captchas are very not mobile friendly for me

    • lechatron@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Amazon employees who refuse to relocate near their teams’ “hub” offices will either have to find a new job internally or leave the company through a “voluntary resignation.”

      Amazon started enforcing its so-called “return-to-hub” policy in recent weeks, according to an internal email and Slack messages obtained by Insider. Hubs are the central locations assigned to each individual team — employees will have to work out of those hubs instead of any office nearest to their current city.

      One manager declared hubs in Seattle, New York, Houston, and Austin, Texas, for their team, according to one Slack message. It said those who refuse to relocate to one of those hubs will either have to transfer to a new team or they will be considered a “voluntary resignation.”

      The move is part of Amazon’s effort to encourage more in-person work. Under the initial return-to-office policy, Amazon assigned offices for most individual employees, but not the whole team. Some employees told Insider that made office work pointless because many still had to use video calls to connect with their teammates spread across the country. Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, said in his RTO announcement earlier this year that “collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we’re in person.”

      In an email to Insider, Amazon’s spokesperson, Brad Glasser, said there’s “more energy, collaboration, and connections happening since we’ve been working together at least three days per week.”

      “We continue to look at the best ways to bring more teams together in the same locations, and we’ll communicate directly with employees as we make decisions that affect them,” Glasser said.

      The new policy comes as a shock to some employees, especially those who were hired for virtual jobs or who moved to remote locations during the pandemic. Prior to the RTO announcement in February, Amazon said in a statement that it didn’t plan on forcing people back to the office, while it would continue “experimenting, learning, and adjusting for a while.”

      “I have seen many posts that people are asked to relocate to one of the hubs in the past week, regardless of virtual status or currently assigned cities/countries. People that had been approved to move to a different country with virtual location were asked to move back to one of the hubs in the US, not to mention people in other cities in the US,” one Slack message read.

      Employees who refuse to join a hub are given 60 days to find a new team that allows them to stay in their current city, according to Slack messages and an internal email sent Tuesday. If unsuccessful after 60 days, it’s considered a voluntary resignation. Most employees were told to make their decision by August.

      Amazon’s spokesperson said relocation benefits will be available, and the company will make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Some roles, including sales and customer support, may also continue to be remote.

      Still, the change only adds to the frustration Amazon employees face. Earlier this year, over 30,000 Amazon employees joined an internal Slack channel shortly after the RTO announcement and signed a petition to demand a reversal of the mandate. Amazon’s HR chief, Beth Galetti, flatly rejected the petition in March, as Insider previously reported.

      “I recognize this is completely unethical, not human-centric, and doesn’t ‘strive to be Earth’s best employer,’” another person wrote in Slack. “It’s so end-game dystopian. None of us knows how to process this news.”