Irish Examiner view: Amazon job losses may be just the tip of the iceberg
Amazon employs approximately 6,500 people at sites in Cork, Dublin, and Drogheda. File picture
News from Amazon this week is unsettling, and not just because the tech giant looks set to reduce its workforce by 14,000 jobs across the world.
There are fears that job cuts in Ireland are part of that plan.
Amazon employs approximately 6,500 people at sites in Cork, Dublin, and Drogheda, and while there were reports this week estimating that up to 150 jobs could be lost here, the company would not comment on this.
That is not the only cause for concern here, however.
Amazon’s stated wish is to cut back after a spike in hiring during the height of the pandemic, which makes perfectly good sense from a business perspective, but it is difficult to avoid a sense that this may be a sign of the future that has little to do with pandemic hiring sprees.
Last week, the reported ambitious plans being prepared by Amazon to replace far more than the 14,000 jobs under threat.
According to that outlet, Amazon wishes to replace over half a million of its 1.2 employees in America with robots, a move the company believes would save about 30 (American) cents on each item that Amazon picks and delivers to its customers.
That is a medium-term plan for the company, however.
The jobs which are specifically threatened by this week’s news are endangered not by robotics, but by artificial intelligence (AI), according to Amazon senior vice president Beth Galetti.
She said the job cuts were needed because AI was "the most transformative technology we've seen since the Internet" and was "enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”
There is a generalised unease about the potential of AI to replace swathes of traditional jobs, but is that unease now to be compounded by the threat posed by robots?
It will surprise no-one to learn that Amazon is so committed to this streamlining objective that it is already strategising about how to present itself in the best possible light when job cuts are announced.
Participating in more community parades is one of the tactics being considered to that end. It is unclear whether robots or people will do the participating.
There was an element of familiarity about one story in the headlines this week, when the vexed matter of RTÉ’s finances got yet another airing.
The fine glaze of farce was not in evidence on this occasion, unlike the staggering Oireachtas hearings of two years ago.
At one of those meetings, for instance, a current RTÉ executive sought to read a text message he had just received from a former RTÉ executive into the official record (he was told that the committee could not accept second-hand evidence).
However, there was still a litany of extraordinary revelations in an internal RTÉ report submitted to minister Patrick O’Donovan this week.
Readers may not have the appetite for a detailed breakdown of all elements of the report, but they include a number of unusual payments of up to €30,000, as well as a pension top-up paid to the widow of a deceased senior executive within the organisation.
There are also questions raised by the report about the specific owner of an artwork valued at €100,000 in RTÉ, as well as the ownership of approximately one acre of land on the RTÉ campus which was given to Eircom, which preceded Eir, for short-term use.
That may be significant for future development on the campus, which makes establishing ownership a matter of some urgency.
RTÉ has described these as “past issues”, but they are believed to have come to light when this latest report was being prepared, which begs a very obvious question.
What other “past issues” will come to light when future reports are compiled?
Mr O’Donovan warned on Wednesday that when RTÉ’s financial controversies emerged in 2023, “we did require structural reform, we did require change.
"We were told we were going to get it, and for that change we’ve put forward the monies on behalf of the people, but that’s not bottomless and it’s not endless.”
The revelations keep coming. Has that structural reform within RTÉ really occurred?
The death was announced this week of actress Prunella Scales at the age of 93.
In a long and varied career, she popped up briefly in in the early 1960s and alongside Gregory Peck in over a decade later.
She enjoyed success on stage with Alan Bennett’s in the 1980s.
In recent years, she and her late husband, actor Timothy West, were the mainstays of the TV series .
Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013, but continued to appear in the series until 2019.
However, Scales will be best remembered as Sybil in the 1970s TV comedy , keeping a tight rein on inept hotelier husband Basil, played by series co-creator John Cleese.
Scales’s portrayal of Sybil became closely identified with her sharply delivered “Basil!” and her repeated “I know” when on the phone.
It would be difficult to overstate her fame in the 70s as a result of , when the name Sybil was all but reduced to a punchline after her performance.
It was a considerable achievement on her part to escape being typecast as a result. Rest in peace.
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