As many as 3,200 Amazon delivery drivers will be laid off by the end of April due to the company cutting ties with contractors, a recent report states.
Business Insider reports that more than 3,200 Amazon delivery drivers are going to be laid off by the end of April after the firm cut ties with multiple third-party delivery contractors as it moves towards working with smaller, cheaper contractors. The layoffs are coming from several different contractors and follow more than 2,000 individuals losing their jobs in October from several of Amazon’s delivery service partners.
Amazon’s delivery partners work exclusively for Amazon and deliver packages to customers’ homes and businesses, these partners are in charge of drivers’ wages, insurance, health benefits, and vehicle maintenance taking the responsibility of these issues away from Amazon. In October, 900 workers in California and Texas from Letter Ride were laid off, in the same month more than 650 workers from Inpax in Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas were let go.
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider: “Sometimes the companies we contract with to deliver packages do not meet our bar for safety, performance or working conditions. When that happens we have a responsibility to terminate those relationships and work to find new partners.”
Amazon offers laid-off workers the chance to apply for jobs with its other contractors in order to “ensure there is zero or very little net job loss” in the areas where it operates, according to an Amazon spokesperson. But no more than 60 percent of those workers are typically hired with other delivery service-partners, according to Amazon’s director of transportation compliance Carey Richardson.
Despite the layoffs, Amazons’ delivery network is growing quickly and as of December, the firm stated that it employed 800 third-party delivery partners managing 75,000 drivers. Amazon operates 150 delivery stations in the United States employing 90,000 workers.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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