Up to 300 jobs at Amazon’s operations in Ireland at risk 

Amazon employs over 6,000 people in Cork, Dublin, and Drogheda

Amazon said on Wednesday it was cutting 16,000 jobs worldwide in the second major round of layoffs at the company in three months.

Up to 300 jobs at Amazon’s operations in Ireland could be at risk after the company announced that it was going to cut 16,000 jobs from its global corporate workforce with the potential for further job cuts in the future.

This comes after the company announced in October that it would be cutting 14,000 global corporate jobs bringing the total headcount reduction at the ecommerce giant to 30,000 in the span of just a few months.

Last week, it was reported that Amazon was planning a second round of job cuts as part of its broader goal under chief executive Andy Jassy, who has been trying to reduce bureaucracy and abandon underperforming businesses.

Overall, Amazon employs around 1.58m people but most of these work in the company's fulfillment centers and warehouses. As of the end of September last year, the company has around 350,000 corporate employees.

This means this more reduced round of redundancies will cut around 4.5% of the company’s corporate workforce. Amazon employs roughly 6,500 people in Ireland in Cork, Dublin, and Drogheda, most of which are corporate roles. If the job cuts are applied proportionately here as well, up to 300 jobs could be impacted.

The job cuts were necessary to strengthen the company by "reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy" at Amazon, its top human resources executive, Beth Galetti, said in a post. Ms Galetti left open the possibility of further reductions, saying some teams will continue to "make adjustments as appropriate".

Earlier in the week, Amazon said it was closing its remaining bricks-and-mortar Fresh grocery stores and Go markets, despite years of effort, and said it was dropping its Amazon One biometric payment system, which scans the palm of a customer's hand.

Amazon has also said it overhired during the pandemic, when demand for online shopping skyrocketed.

"Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm — where we announce broad reductions every few months," Ms Galetti said in Wednesday's note. "That's not our plan," she said.

Amazon on Tuesday mistakenly sent an email appearing to refer to the layoff plan as “Project Dawn” to someAmazon Web Services staff, unsettling thousands of workers.

The full scope of the cuts could not be learned, but employees from multiple AWS units, the Alexa voice assistant, Prime Video, devices, advertising and last mile delivery, among others, indicated online and in emails to Reuters that they had been impacted.

Mr Jassy said last summer that rising use of AI tools would mean more automation of duties, leading to corporate job losses.

Executives at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos said last week that while jobs would disappear, new ones would spring up, with two telling Reuters that AI would be used as an excuse by companies planning to cut jobs anyway.

Tech giants, including Amazon, Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, and Microsoft, sharply ramped up hiring during the covid pandemic demand surge and have lately been restructuring.

Amazon has been investing in robotics at its warehouses to speed up packaging and deliveries for its e-commerce segment, reduce reliance on human labor and cut costs.

Shares in Amazon, which is set to report quarterly results next week, were up less than 1% in pre-market trading.

• Additional reporting by Reuters

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