Amazon warehouse workers in the Triangle believe they’re safe amid company layoffs
Amazon, the second largest private employer in the United States, announced this week it is in the process of laying off 18,000 employees, a move its CEO Andy Jassy said is a reaction to an “uncertain economy” and rapid hiring in recent years.
“Companies that last a long time go through different phases,” Jassy said in a statement Wednesday. “They’re not in heavy people expansion mode every year.”
The elimination of 18,000 jobs represents roughly 1.25% of the 1.6 million people the company employed at the start of last year. It is also an increase of the initial number of layoffs the company reportedly planned to make. In November, multiple media outlets, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, reported Amazon could cut around 10,000 positions.
Amazon is a major job creator in the Triangle. According to data from the North Carolina Department of Labor, it’s the third-largest private employer in Wake County and among the top 15 in Durham County. Amazon’s largest local presence is its 2 million-square-foot distribution center in Garner — known as RDU1 — a few miles southeast of downtown Raleigh.
But workers at the Garner plant don’t, at this time, expect the local workforce to be hit by the cuts.
“We don’t believe that the broader Amazon layoffs will impact local Amazon associates,” said Rev. Ryan Brown, an RDU1 worker who serves as president of Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (C.A.U.S.E.), which seeks to unionize the 4,300-person Garner plant. Brown and fellow employee Mary Hill cofounded C.A.U.S.E. last January.
In his announcement, Jassy said the cuts would be most concentrated within Amazon’s human resources department and its stores. In a separate email to The News & Observer, Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said stores include the company’s wider e-commerce retail business.
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything else to share at this time,” Glasser added.
In addition to eliminating jobs, Amazon has also been shedding real estate. Nationwide, it shuttered dozens of warehouses in 2022 as customers reverted back to in-person shopping as the pandemic has ebbed. In September, the company closed its DRT1 delivery station in east Durham, a 260,000-square-foot facility that was the city’s first Amazon delivery center when it opened in 2019.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
This story was originally published January 6, 2023 at 12:39 PM.
