Amazon could stop hiring by 2024 as the company burns its entire warehouse workforce annually thanks to grueling shifts, a leaked internal document reveals.
The document, first reported by Recode, includes the words: “If we continue as usual, Amazon will exhaust the available labor supply on the US network by 2024.”
The document was published internally in 2021. According to Recode, an Amazon spokesman has not disproved its authenticity.
One of the areas expected to have the fewest workers is the Inland Empire in California, an hour and a half east of Los Angeles. The region is around a two-hour drive from 20 million potential Amazon customers.
The document says Amazon could run out of new employees at the Inland Empire by the end of 2021 or 2022, although the warehouses at the Inland Empire remain operational and it’s unclear what staffing issues they’re currently facing.
Mesa, Arizona, could also be facing staff shortages very soon, as statistics show that Amazon — famous for the harsh, tightly controlled working conditions imposed on warehouse workers — loses more workers than it hires each year.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (above) said employee safety is the company’s top priority
According to the Washington Post, six for every 100 Amazon workers were injured in 2020.
Wilmington, Delaware and Memphis, Tennessee are also at risk of running out of staff, the report showed.
According to Amazon’s own data, the company had a turnover rate of 123 percent last year.
This means that as many employees left the company over the course of the year as were employed there at the beginning of the year – plus an additional 23 percent.
Many employees stay longer at Amazon, especially those in higher positions. But others come and go over the course of a year, adding to the turnover rate.
Amazon employs around a million people in the US, including employees at its headquarters, making it the second-largest private employer behind the 2.3 million-strong Walmart “family.”
The turnover rate is well above the national average for the most common jobs at Amazon, warehouse work and transportation.
The national average for warehouse and transport attrition was 46% in 2019 and 59% in 2020.
For retail work, the average was 58% in 2019 and 70% in 2020.
According to the Washington Post, six for every 100 Amazon workers were injured in 2020.
In September, the company’s CEO, Andy Jassy, said in an interview on CNBC, “For us, the number one priority is the safety of employees in our fulfillment centers.”
Jassy took over the role of CEO from founder Jeff Bezos in July 2021.
In the years leading up to Covid-19, Amazon was shedding workers at a rate of 3% per week, coupled with annual sales of 150%, reports the New York Times.
Among the many reasons for the potential labor shortage are Amazon’s controversial employment practices and worker health and safety
Jose Pagan, pictured here, said he was electronically fired after taking two days off to deal with an infected tooth
An anecdote reproduced in the Recode article mentions an Amazon supervisor from the Bronx, New York.
Jose Pagan, 35, who supported his wife and children on his Amazon salary, said he was electronically laid off after missing work to treat an infected tooth.
Pagan said he did not have enough notice to use vacation days and did not have enough unpaid time off, which led to his termination.
He went on to say the company didn’t care, even though he had a medical certificate.
Pagan worked a full week after his health problems and found out he was being fired when he showed up for work one evening to find his key card wasn’t working.
He was then informed that he no longer worked for the company.
Pagan went to a human resources representative who told him that the company would welcome him back in 90 days and that in the meantime he should try working as a driver at Uber or Grubhub.
At the time of his discharge, Pagan was close to being promoted.
A former manager said: “It was almost impossible to get fired as a worker”
Jassy, said in an internal memo to employees in April 2022 that there is no “silver bullet” to magically make Amazon’s facilities more secure
Despite several reports of occasional layoffs, a former manager at Amazon’s Phoenix plant told Recode that the culture is now more focused on retaining workers due to high turnover rates.
Michael Garrigan said, “They were so concerned about the attrition and loss of employees that they reversed all the policies that we as managers had to enforce.”
Garrigan said managers joked that they didn’t bother writing quotes to workers because HR would “exclude” it.
He said: “It was almost impossible to get fired as a worker.”
Jassy said in an internal memo to employees in April 2022 that there was no “silver bullet” to magically make Amazon’s facilities more secure, CBS News reports.
Jassy said in part: “We don’t want to be average. We want to be top of the class. We still have a long way to go.’
In December 2021, six Amazon employees were killed in Edwardsville, Illinois when a tornado hit the facility.
Workers who survived the tornado later filed a lawsuit against the construction company that built the facility. In it, the plaintiffs said there were no adequate shelters available inside, KMOV reported in May 2022.
After the tornado, Amazon dismissed claims by employees at the Edwardsville center that the company banned them from using their cellphones at work, Business Insider reports.
According to the activist group more perfect union, Two workers died within 24 hours at the company’s plant in Bessemer, Alabama.
The group said one of the deceased men had his request to go home denied by human resources. Hours later, he suffered a fatal stroke at work.
The group claims that a total of six people died at the Bessemer facility in 2021 and that Amazon covered up the deaths.
Amazon denies these allegations.
In April 2022, Amazon was accused of illegally trying to influence a losing vote on unionization at the Bessemer plant, CNBC reports.