Amazon is offering full-time employment to 125,000 of the temporary workers it hired since March to deal with the massive increase in consumer demand for product delivery amidst the pandemic.
“In March, we announced the hiring of 175,000 roles across our operations network to help provide for our communities and keep as many people as possible working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like other companies, we hired these individuals for seasonal roles to meet a surge in demand and, for many, there was the hope of returning back to their previous companies once states began to re-open,” staff said in a COVID-19 blog post on May 28.
Amazon said that 125,000 of the 175,000 temporary workers would be offered “permanent jobs if employees would like to stay at Amazon long term.”
The new hires would be working across at the nearly 500 warehouses that Amazon owns.
Amazon stated that a regular full-time employee, once hired, would be presented with a “comprehensive benefits package” from the first day on the job, as well as a minimum wage pay of at least $15 per hour.
The blog also stated that employees would have access to “training programs like Career Choice that make it easier to springboard into a different career at Amazon or other companies.”
This also ties in with data showing that in just nine weeks of the pandemic, nearly 41 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits.
“As the long-term becomes more clear, we’re providing the opportunity for 125,000 of those who came on with us seasonally to stay with Amazon and transition into a regular, full-time role beginning in June. Some may choose to return to their previous jobs and others may choose to stay at Amazon in seasonal or part-time roles,” the post explained.
Amazon has also invected nearly $4 billion on its employees to implement health and safety measures to protect employees, saying that its employees are doing their all amidst the pandemic alongside the people working on the front lines.
“Our employees and partners in our operations network are among the many heroes during the COVID-19 crisis, and we’re investing nearly $4 billion to keep them safe and helping them deliver for people across our communities,” the post read.
From NTD News
