Amazon workers push for reversal of return to office policy

More than 500 employees have written a letter to the CEO of Amazon Web Services to urge the company to reverse its full-time return-to-office policy.

In September, AWS parent company Amazon told employees that they would have to return to the office full-time from January 2025. Chief executive Andy Jassy said the company needed to “return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of Covid”.

Jassy argued that being in the physical workplace full-time would strengthen the company’s culture and the effectiveness of its teams.

But this week AWS workers put together a letter to their unit CEO Matt Garman, stating that: “We were appalled to hear the non-data-driven explanation you gave for Amazon imposing a five-day in-office mandate.”

Garman claimed that 9 in 10 workers he had spoken with agreed with the return-to-office policy, but the AWS employees said this was “inconsistent with the experiences of many employees”, and “misrepresented the realities of working at Amazon”.

A spokesperson for Amazon told Reuters, which had sight of the letter, that employees would be offered commuter benefits, elder care and subsidised parking to help with the return to the office.

Amazon currently runs a policy that requires employees to be in the office three days a week. The company is reported to have told employees they could work in regional offices, move to Seattle (where its headquarters are based) or “voluntarily resign”.

The letter argued that requiring people to be in the office five days a week would disproportionately impact employees with neurodivergent conditions or childcare responsibilities.

It included several stories from workers describing their family and other obligations, and the impact a full-time return to office would have. One said that the closest office would be four hours away.

The workers said the new policy would “break the trust of your employees who have not only personal experience that shows the benefits of remote work, but have seen the extensive data which supports that experience”.

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