Leaked messages show Amazon will force a ‘voluntary resignation’ on employees failing to relocate near their team ‘hubs’::undefined
Sounds like the solution is to say, “Yes,” then never show up onsite. Make them fire you, so you’re entitled to unemployment benefits and any severance.
No. The solution is to call their bullshitnout.
A company can’t hire you to work from one location (regardless if it’s WFH or not,) and then unilaterally decide to have you relocate.
“You can apply internally” or anything else that is a new contract doesn’t matter. They’re changing the terms of employment, and they can’t do that unilaterally.
The choices are to agree with their new terms, accept the “out” of taking another position in your area, or reject them. They can use what ever semantics they want, but it’s still a layoff.
A company can’t hire you to work from one location (regardless if it’s WFH or not,) and then unilaterally decide to have you relocate.
In the
useUS, with at-will employment, they absolutely can. Terminating someone for not relocating is absolutely legal. And, barring contract or law to the contrary, severance is not required.This state of things are what happens when you remove unions from the workforce, and why companies like Amazon absolutely flip their shit when union talk starts.
Well, yes. But then they trigger unemployment. The can’t here is that they’re trying to avoid that.
In the us, you have to pay unemployment if they’re not terminated for cause. And refusing to locate is not an “acceptable” cause, so it comes to be an at-will termination (ie “we’re firing you because we can.”)
Also, the jobs they’re talking about usually come with severance packages. It’s not the warehouse gig workers
This is true.
Qualifying for Unemployment Insurance benefits is a decision made by the State, not the employer, and the standard for qualification is much lower than the one used to determine if terminating an employee is legal or not. That is, there are many things that will get you UI benefits that are still perfectly legal reasons to fire someone, as you said.
As an aside, UI is an insurance product sold (forcibly, by the State) to the employer. The employer pays a premium which rises or falls based on the number and cost of claims that employer generates. Naturally, employers are incentivized to reduce the number of claims to keep costs low, but it’s not, as is commonly thought, the employer paying benefits directly.
As another side, a strategy companies are using lately to keep their UI costs low is providing a severance package that pays all or part of the employee’s salary but paying it out over time. Depending on the state and the rules for that state’s UI program, that often counts against any UI benefit the former employee would receive, reducing the weekly benefit (sometimes to $0). It’s a thing I’ve only seen in the past 5 or so years. I would expect States to start to recognize this end-run around the system and adjust the rules accordingly in the near future.
As another side, a strategy companies are using lately to keep their UI costs low is providing a severance package that pays all or part of the employee’s salary but paying it out over time. Depending on the state and the rules for that state’s UI program, that often counts against any UI benefit the former employee would receive, reducing the weekly benefit (sometimes to $0). It’s a thing I’ve only seen in the past 5 or so years. I would expect States to start to recognize this end-run around the system and adjust the rules accordingly in the near future.
this is an old strategy. It’s called “severance.” Many company will offer a severance package before going to lay offs that enhance retirement packages (especially for people close enough to it anyhow) or otherwise entice people to take it, instead.
As an aside, UI is an insurance product sold (forcibly, by the State) to the employer. The employer pays a premium which rises or falls based on the number and cost of claims that employer generates. Naturally, employers are incentivized to reduce the number of claims to keep costs low, but it’s not, as is commonly thought, the employer paying benefits directly.
It would really, really, suck if you had to rely on a former employer to pay unemployment. Just saying.
Did you not see the end of their post?
Yes. “Layoff” has a very specific meaning in employment. In the US, it is, in one form or another, ending the employment agreement because there is no longer available work. I.e., “Your position has been eliminated.”
That’s not the case in the “Everyone has to relocate to (place)” situation. It is not a layoff if you fail to comply. It is the company terminating your employment because you refuse to perform the job they want you to do.
I feel like everyone understands that the question of “have you been fired” shouldn’t include instances of “I refused to relocate” though.
It’s a constructive dismissal where I live, unless your employment contract specifies you must work in the office. If it doesn’t and you applied for and accepted a remote job, then you’re pretty much golden.
I’m not in USA though FWIW.
IIRC it is where I live (in the US) as well.
You know how a lot of job applications say something like “Have you ever been fired?”. That is a pretty strong filter. When you are expecting hundreds, if not thousands, of applications from everyone who knows how to look at linkedin, you need to set those filters up. And it becomes a roll of the dice as to whether “worked at a FAANG” gets you auto interviewed or “been fired” gets you auto rejected. And, if you are not currently working for them, employment verification is not too uncommon. Everyone saw the blog posts about how to lie on your CV. So if there is no risk of “Fred will get fired if we ask Amazon if he works there” then HR will ask… and get an earful.
So it stands to reason that most staff are more likely to just resign and lose their severance rather than take the termination.
You know how a lot of job applications say something like “Have you ever been fired?”. That is a pretty strong filter.
Constructive dismissal isn’t the same thing as being fired for cause, regardless of whether Amazon tries to lie about it.
And I am sure Amazon will make that distinction when they get called about the person who actively spited them and forced a firing/termination when they were otherwise going to get to skip out on unemployment and severance.
But hey, you can sue. That worked out real well for the ex-twitter employees… and even people amazon dicked over in the past.
Like a lot of things in life: it doesn’t actually matter who is morally or legally in the right. What matters is what the bad actors can get away with.
If you get to the interview stage and say “look, you should know that I was part of the team that were fired as part of this news article” then you are basically set. Any company worth working for will say “Jesus christ, that is fucked”. But if HR calls amazon to make sure you aren’t some kid who was lying on linkedin? You are now not just a bad potential employee, you are a liar. And that is the kind of thing that can potentially even come up in conversations with colleagues.
I think you’re really blowing this out of proportion as if this is the scary “permanent record” teachers used to warn you about in elementary school.
Explaining that they needed you to relocate and you weren’t willing is a satisfactoy answer. Additionally there’s no requirement that you put Amazon on your resume if it did come down to that. Frankly I don’t think the new employer would really care what happened between you and some other corporation if you seem competent and they aren’t going to check every reference on every single person that applies to a corporation with 100k+ employees to stop you from getting an interview first.
It is less a “permanent record” and more just the reality of a global workplace. Once you hit the “amazon” level of employment, you are applying for the kinds of positions where people will move across the country for that paycheck. You are looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants.
And the reality of it is: When you have that many applications, you aren’t going to interview every one of them. Hell, you probably aren’t going to read every one of them. You are going to apply basic filters. Asked for a cover letter? You’ll probably ignore that chatgpt generated mess, but you better see that a PDF was uploaded. Otherwise you just avoided an interview. Same for red flags in the application process.
I’ve been on a lot of hiring committees over the years. At bigger companies? I only ever see the filtered applicants. So you would have never had the chance to even explain what happened. And at the smaller companies? I know I try to “be one of the good ones” and will do a quick google as to why you might have left at a given time and so forth. But I’ve also punted a few that looked “too good to be true” to the poor bastard we have handling HR for a startup.
As for “just don’t list Amazon”: Sure. If you have a ridiculously amazing CV then you can skip a FAANG company. Otherwise, you want to list that shit because that is going to open more doors for you than just about anything imaginable. And that is also the kind of work history where people are going to check to see if your linkedin is legit and maybe call Amazon to find out if you are lying.
Small company or even a bankrupt company? Too much effort. But one of the biggest companies on the planet that is known for hiring some of the best of the best of multiple engineering disciplines? That is the scenario where you ask Joe in HR to make a call or two.
Like I said before: Amazon/FAANG (or whatever we call it these days)? That pretty much guarantees you get an interview. Report that you were fired? That pretty much guarantees we don’t bother with you because we don’t have to care about whether you were fired for good reasons or bad reasons. And if we find out you lied about the latter while we are checking the former?
At this point every hiring manager out there is aware of Amazon’s terrible workplace practices. Put on the resume don’t say you got fired. When you get asked why you left, tell the truth of the situation. Some managers won’t want you because if it sure, but the intelligent ones can see the tree through the forest and those are the places you want to work anyway.
It’s sub optimal but that’s what happens when you join a place like Amazon.
Have you ever been fired?
Lie. They lie to you, you lie to them. They’re not the government. The worst they can do is fire you if they ever found out, which they won’t.
That’s job abandonment and would disqualify from unemployment benefits.
I WFH permanantly , for a company named after a river. They can’t do that to me , why? Because I live in Europe were we have unions and collective bargaining. That’s the only difference , and it makes a big difference.
We really need a remote workers union in the US
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Is there a Canadian (or ideally an international) org similar to this? Remote work is global. I’ve worked with two fully remote companies in the past three years and my colleages are literally everywhere. I’ve seen mass layoffs personally, followed by onboarding thousands of contractors in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. We all know remote workers in less developed regions are training the AI being deployed. and moderating our content. Etc etc.
Would love to see this labor movement go global. Remote work is connected and networked, inherently. I don’t know if I’ll see a global workers movement in my lifetime but I fucking hope I do (I’m pretty old).
The US is such a dystopian terrorist shithole, reading about it is like reading about a cartoon villain. Coup this guy, cause a civil war by installing that guy, destabilize entire continents for corporate profits and treat your own fucking citizens like actual bondslaves in a feudal state. Bloody hell, fucking axis of evil for over a hundred years.
We’ve been evil the whole time. This nation was built on genocide and slavery.
You say this but there’s a reason our tech salaries are way way higher than most other countries.
An Amazon tech worker on average will make 250 to 450k total comp a year.
Anyone working for these big companies in the engineering fields is easily making 300k a year and up after rsu. Those salaries dont exist in Europe. Some companies offer close in the UK etc but… That’s why people stay in the us.
Also if we don’t like our salary we just go hop to another place for a raise.
The us sucks for people without an in demand skill like basic laborers or unskilled workers. It’s amazing for folks in a market with demand.
(Source I hire and work in both regions. And have looked for ways to move to the eu region.)
I honestly enjoy your contribution. Perfectly showcases the disregard for people who are judged to not contribute enough to be deserving of a humane quality of living despite performing tasks that need to be done.
A very american look on people.
I mean we’re talking about Amazon workers here. So, these are not the typical Americans and the typical american is not being forced back to office because they very likely never had the opportunity to work remote to begin with.
For those making these salaries, they can very much with the extra pay they receive compensate for many of the issues raised in a previous thread.
Yes, we’re talking about Amazon workers here. People that are not typical Americans and therefore do not deserve a humane quality of life.
One can see why the US is such a terrorist shithole.
They already have a higher than normal quality of life based on their salaries and rsus.
They have quite the humane quality of life. They make more at entry level than the average family in the us wife and husband combined.
They generally start out of college making 150k at least between rsu and salary.
There is no such thing as an unskilled worker. All jobs require skill that you learn before or during the job. Most of these skills do not command high salaries but I prefer underpaid laborer or lower working class to unskilled.
This is completely false because people like to ignore the fact that there are worldwide recognized definitions for this.
Unskilled workers does not mean you don’t learn a skill. It means you don’t have specialized training required to do it.
We’ve had the concept of skilled laborers for ages. The words artisan or journeyman have represented it for ages.
The reason unskilled labor jobs make less is because it’s easier to replace the person. Wages are entirely based on the value you provide vs the difficulty of finding someone who can do your work.
We see this in the exact market this thread was about. At the height of the pandemic when companies were hiring like crazy expecting massive growth they paid up to 500 to 600k in some cases with sign on bonuses etc. Now that the market is completely flooded with people looking for jobs and there’s not enough hiring going on the salaries being given out are significantly less in many cases (often like 250k to 300k instead).
Voluntary resignation = termination. You should still qualify for unemployment.
Forced voluntary resignation no less. Definitely sounds like termination to me.
The specific term, for anyone wondering (or who may be facing this) is “constructive dismissal”. If your employer significantly changes the terms of employment (hours, location, job duties, etc) to make you quit, it is legally viewed similar to firing.
I understand the value of working in an office, but I wish our society would choose to pursue improving the quality of our lives instead of increasing productive capacity. It’s never enough. These companies always want more.
We can do our jobs just fine, even great, at home. But they want to squeeze everything out of their workers.
It’s not about the benefits of going to an office. It’s all about corporate realestate. Companies and rich people have a lot of money invested in office buildings and they are all losing value.
There are also huge swathes of middle managers who cannot justify the existence of their job if all the peasants are free to work from wherever. Who’s gonna judge you for being 3 minutes late and not in dress code as you sit and type?
Middle managers have absolutely zero say in such kind of decisions. They often find out a day before everyone else to prepare to share the news to their reports.
I think for a lot of engineers, their productivity would be much higher at home. In the office you have way more distractions and time wasters, like coworkers, physical meetings, etc. Even if employees at home are scrolling social media, they’re going to procrastinate in office too, just in a different way, whether that’s just sitting and doing nothing or going out for lunch on a really long break.
Yeah this is the part I don’t get. We are always arguing about whether productivity is highest with wfh or wfo. But we never discuss what maximizes people’s happiness. Which seems more important to me, why are we doing any of this anyway? Capitalism I guess.
I work at an NGO and you could argue that they are ‘one of the good ones’. They work us into the ground from the goodness in their hearts. The motivation at C-suite is that they want to get as much work done as possible because it seems important. If your job helps to save lives then you want to be really efficient. Profit companies have different goals but the motivation to improve efficiency remains.
Technology enables it. As productive as my company is today I know that we are well behind where we could be. Recent developments in AI have set a brand new horizon to reach towards. These forces aren’t going away anytime soon. It makes you want to move faster.
We need to incentivize companies to put more money into people. I think this is something that government has the power to do. There is definitely a way to make sure a company hires two people, pays them salary of two people, and they do the job of one person by working 25 hours a week.
I understand the value of working in an office
I don’t, but I’m also a sysadmin. Offices are my hell.
What I learned from some of my colleagues when we moved to WFH, is that some people want to get away from their kids and working from an office is a blessing for them.
It’s never enough. These companies always want more.
The entire system is designed to demand more every year. If they don’t show year-over-year increases in revenue then stock investors dump the stocks, the company loses value, and it’s considered a failing company, even if the revenue and performance is already enough to sustain a billion people for a thousand years. Enough is not enough, the system demands more.
Amazon started enforcing its so-called “return-to-hub” policy in recent weeks, according to an internal email and Slack messages obtained by Insider. Hubs are the central locations assigned to each individual team — employees will have to work out of those hubs instead of any office nearest to their current city.
Amazon assigned offices for most individual employees, but not the whole team. Some employees told Insider that made office work pointless because many still had to use video calls to connect with their teammates spread across the country.
Why does Amazon even bother to do this? Why force their employees back to office if they’ll going to work remotely with their distributed team anyway? Why not save money on office space by letting those employees to work from their home?
Why not save money on office space by letting those employees to work from their home?
Because they can’t control them at home.
I’ve never felt more under control by the company I worked for than when my team was all on a Slack channel even though we were all WFH.
Just curious, how does being in a Slack channel feel more like being controlled than being in an office?
The project we were working on required all members to be available to answer questions from other team members right away and this happened a lot, so you couldn’t just wander off and do something else around the house or your absence would be immediately noticeable. At the office it was easy to disappear into the bathroom for awhile or take a nap in the sick room or head down to the food court in the basement of the building.
They bought a ton of real estate over the years.
Then places like Seattle were literally falling a part without the added cash cow of commuters stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for 16 hours of a workday.
And that commercial real estate is the backing for a LOT of corporate debt. I imagine they’re afraid of the collateral against which that debt was borrowed collapsing in value.
Why is that a concern for amazon?
They already know wfh is as good or even better for productivity. This doesn’t see like a move in their best interest
Seattle was not “literally falling a part”.
https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2020/06/24/2020-project-pause-en/
It did survive and survived better than others: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/seattle-fared-better-than-expected-in-the-pandemic-economy/
But theres no pussyfooting about it. Shit was bad and we are still in a hard recovery from it. Almost like our cities are suffering from their own form of Long Covid.
My guess is taxes.
Control. Why do republican men tell women how to live their lives when it doesn’t change their own?
Some of the same insecure power hungry losers are high up managers in these companies
My employer is trying to do this too and using the same logic. I’ll just have to report to an office to video chat my team. Luckily my boss and I are in agreement and until they somehow force both of us, I won’t be doing it. I will, however, be updating my resume.
You’re a 1 on a sheet, if you stand in the way of resource allocation then they can find another 1. Welcome to the delightful world of big business.
I had this exact thing happen to me, they wanted me to move from a tax free state to LA. I said no and they came back we promised your position to another employee. I said ok I need at least a 50% raise to counter the cost of living and taxes. They balked and thought they could push me into it. I stood my ground to stay in my current position and they had to fire me, which looks bad on them as I had no infractions.
I collected, didn’t have to pay back my relocation (over 20k) and had a job that I pushed off until near end of unemployment. Thanks for the free long vacation! I went to China and HK (this is before the chaos) for a few months
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It’s well past time for all workers to unionize. The corpos are only getting worse and we need to organize to protect ourselves.
“Forced voluntary resignation”… What a fucking gross euphemism for being fired. It’s disgusting but I guess at this point I really shouldn’t be surprised by how Amazon treats their employees.
It’s not a euphemism though, if you voluntarily resign, you’re probably not eligible for unemployment.
They can’t FORCE it… but they CAN make you THINK they’re forcing you to resign.
My girlfriend got laid off a while back, and they asked for her to submit a resignation letter instead of them firing her. She said no. Guess who got unemployment while she was looking for work?
Oh it gets worse, my old company used the term “involuntary separation”.
How about “un-hired”?
They just want to downsize without looking bad to investors, lmao.
Downsizing is good for investors since it reduces costs making your quarterly results look sexier.
Downsizing can look scary to investors though, like the company isn’t doing well.
Yes and no. They have to cut expenditures but make it look like it’s not because they’re not making enough profit.
A company with high profits good, but a company laying off employees to get high profits must be in trouble.
It’s a stupid dance between VC and CEOs.
Call me crazy, but Voluntary Resignation doesn’t sound very “voluntary” if it’s forced.
It sounds a lot like Mandatory Fun, actually.
Can anyone post the full text? The captchas are very not mobile friendly for me
Amazon employees who refuse to relocate near their teams’ “hub” offices will either have to find a new job internally or leave the company through a “voluntary resignation.”
Amazon started enforcing its so-called “return-to-hub” policy in recent weeks, according to an internal email and Slack messages obtained by Insider. Hubs are the central locations assigned to each individual team — employees will have to work out of those hubs instead of any office nearest to their current city.
One manager declared hubs in Seattle, New York, Houston, and Austin, Texas, for their team, according to one Slack message. It said those who refuse to relocate to one of those hubs will either have to transfer to a new team or they will be considered a “voluntary resignation.”
The move is part of Amazon’s effort to encourage more in-person work. Under the initial return-to-office policy, Amazon assigned offices for most individual employees, but not the whole team. Some employees told Insider that made office work pointless because many still had to use video calls to connect with their teammates spread across the country. Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, said in his RTO announcement earlier this year that “collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when we’re in person.”
In an email to Insider, Amazon’s spokesperson, Brad Glasser, said there’s “more energy, collaboration, and connections happening since we’ve been working together at least three days per week.”
“We continue to look at the best ways to bring more teams together in the same locations, and we’ll communicate directly with employees as we make decisions that affect them,” Glasser said.
The new policy comes as a shock to some employees, especially those who were hired for virtual jobs or who moved to remote locations during the pandemic. Prior to the RTO announcement in February, Amazon said in a statement that it didn’t plan on forcing people back to the office, while it would continue “experimenting, learning, and adjusting for a while.”
“I have seen many posts that people are asked to relocate to one of the hubs in the past week, regardless of virtual status or currently assigned cities/countries. People that had been approved to move to a different country with virtual location were asked to move back to one of the hubs in the US, not to mention people in other cities in the US,” one Slack message read.
Employees who refuse to join a hub are given 60 days to find a new team that allows them to stay in their current city, according to Slack messages and an internal email sent Tuesday. If unsuccessful after 60 days, it’s considered a voluntary resignation. Most employees were told to make their decision by August.
Amazon’s spokesperson said relocation benefits will be available, and the company will make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Some roles, including sales and customer support, may also continue to be remote.
Still, the change only adds to the frustration Amazon employees face. Earlier this year, over 30,000 Amazon employees joined an internal Slack channel shortly after the RTO announcement and signed a petition to demand a reversal of the mandate. Amazon’s HR chief, Beth Galetti, flatly rejected the petition in March, as Insider previously reported.
“I recognize this is completely unethical, not human-centric, and doesn’t ‘strive to be Earth’s best employer,’” another person wrote in Slack. “It’s so end-game dystopian. None of us knows how to process this news.”
I’m so glad I work for a remote company that states in my employment contract my job is a remote job (or at least, it doesn’t specify in-office requirements), so if they ever try to force me to relocate, it would be considered a constructive dismissal and then I get to collect unemployment benefits until I find a new job. That probably won’t happen though cause we have people working all across the country. Though, this isn’t in USA so maybe things are different there.
Of course, always get your contracts reviewed by an employment lawyer.
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Right to work states have lower incomes, workers who fall for it have been scammed and those laws need to be removed
I just realized today that if Capitol Hill gets its way and bans encryption, then all remote work that depends on encrypted VPNs will no longer be available. I wonder if that’s the point, since the billionaire commercial property owners are losing $800B annually due to remote work changes.
Suddenly I’m even more glad I don’t live in the USA, jeez. Things seem to be getting worse and worse there.
Amazon’s greed and selfishness continues to show itself.
This is most companies post-pandemic. Some went remote, but most returned to office in some kind of hybrid situation. My company does a 1x per week, and most people don’t adhere to it.
I feel like I need to point out the obvious an awful lot lately, but it’s not voluntary if it’s forced. They’re trying to get out of paying severance and unemployment. Do not comply!
Billionaire apocalypse. Popcorn FTW
