The American e-commerce company could run out of people to hire in its warehouses by 2024. An internal memo shows that this is a real issue for Amazon.
Amazon may have introduced the maximum number of robots in its warehouses, but the company still needs humans to run them. According to an internal document from Amazon, relayed by the Recode site on June 17, 2022, the American e-commerce giant could soon run out of workers in its warehouses.
The firm of Jeff Bezos is awash in criticism, in particular because it is accused of treating its employees badly, of having a harmful impact on the environment and ecology, of destroying jobs, of selling counterfeit products and of disposing unsold items.
Towards a labor crisis at Amazon
Many of Amazon’s logistics employees complain about very poor working conditions in warehouses. In addition to ridiculous salaries, an excessive workload and a degrading context in which they are tracked, they are very poorly protected. So, in 2016, an article from the World referred to order pickers as ” the new miners », because their role is to gather the different products of a package by running throughout the warehouse in order to be able to ship it on time.
Amazon therefore does not already have the image of a model employer. The report shared via Recode confirms this and shows that, on average, the warehouse worker only stays at Amazon for eight months, before leaving or abandoning his position: “If we continue business as usual, Amazon will exhaust the supply of labor available in the US network by 2024.“, quotes the document. It is clear that, if Amazon maintains the same usual managerial practices, the supply of labor available in the United States is likely to be severely depleted.
Some regions of the country could even be affected before 2024. This is the case, for example, of the Inland Empire in California, and Phoenix in Arizona which, as the report indicates, would have already exhausted since the end of 2021“all of their employee reserves”. Among the factors leading to this conclusion, several are known and even seem quite logical: an unemployment rate at historically low levels in the United States, the health crisis, or even competition with other companies.
Amazon’s workforce of more than 1 million is essential to maintaining the online sales system and deliveries for customers who use the Amazon Prime service.
What solutions for Amazon?
If the situation does not change, Amazon will soon no longer be able to continue to ensure its record delivery times. Several solutions are on the table at Amazon, for example:
- Start by being more efficient when hiring, and facilitating the integration of future and new employees.
- The firm of Jeff Bezos could also offer a salary increase to its employees and a loyalty system for the oldest. As a reminder, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos did not want to keep his employees for too long, probably fearing their long-term claims. Although, however, this has never stopped the commerce platform from rising to the top and being the second largest private commerce site on American soil.
Anyway, maybe this report will end up opening the eyes of Jeff Bezos’ firm to the problem of degrading working conditions.