Amazon Tech Employees Are Up in Arms over Return-to-Office Mandate

Amazon’s corporate employees are pushing back on the company’s recent return-to-office orders. One employee reportedly commented, “By arbitrarily forcing return-to-office without providing data to support it and despite clear evidence that it is the wrong decision for employees, Amazon has failed its role as Earth’s best employer. I believe this decision will be detrimental to our business and is antithetical to how we make decisions at Amazon.”

CNBC reports that employees at Amazon are protesting the company’s recent return-to-office order, which will start on May 1 and forces them to work at least three days per week in person. The mandate, which CEO Andy Jassy announced in a memo last week, infuriated many tech workers who had become accustomed to working remotely during the pandemic.

In the memo announcing the return to the office, Jassy wrote: “We know that it won’t be perfect at first, but the office experience will steadily improve over the coming months (and years) as our real estate and facilities teams smooth out the wrinkles, and ultimately keep evolving how we want our offices to be set up to capture the new ways we want to work.”

Amazon tech employees reportedly wrote an internal petition and started a Slack channel to protest the requirement. Just days after it was announced, employees are urging Jassy and Amazon’s leadership group, known as the S-team, to abandon the mandate. Since then, 16,000 people have joined the group, and as of Tuesday night, 5,000 workers had signed the petition.

An audio recording of Jassy’s most recent all-hands meeting was the subject of numerous comments on the e-commerce giant’s internal news feed for staff members, Inside Amazon. One screenshot of a comment seen by CNBC stated: “By arbitrarily forcing return-to-office without providing data to support it and despite clear evidence that it is the wrong decision for employees, Amazon has failed its role as Earth’s best employer. I believe this decision will be detrimental to our business and is antithetical to how we make decisions at Amazon.”

Given that many workers have grown accustomed to working remotely, this opposition highlights the challenges businesses face in managing the transition back to in-person work. A recent Accenture survey found that 83 percent of workers prefer a hybrid work model. In comparison, only nine percent want to work in an office full-time again.

Some Amazon employees have complained that in order to be closer to the office for commuting purposes, they may need to find childcare arrangements, elderly parent caregivers, or even be forced to relocate. Others took advantage of the company’s prior policy on flexible work to relocate outside of major cities in search of more affordable housing, but they are now worried about their commute.

Read more at CNBC here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan