Amazon Offers Workers $5,000 To Quit

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced the “Pay to Quit” program to the company’s shareholders on Thursday.

Bezos said the new programs offers Amazon’s employees up to $5,000 to quit their jobs, with the goal being to make sure their employees really want to be there.

“The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want… In the long run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company,” Bezos said.

The offer will be sent out to employees once a year under the headline, “Please Don’t Take This Offer.”

Bezos said the idea came from Zappos, the online footwear and clothing retailer which Amazon purchased in 2009. Zappos continues to operate as a separate unit from the main Amazon site.

Amazon is in the process of adding warehouses, known as “fulfillment centers” so that it can cut delivery times to customers. Today is has 96 such locations. Company filings show it had 117,300 full-time and part-time employees at the end of last year, up by nearly a third from its employment level a year earlier.

Amazon traditionally has declined to say how much it pays its warehouse workers, although it says it pay about 30% more than a typical retail worker.

According to data gathered last year by career website Glassdoor.com, Amazon pays its warehouse workers an average hourly wage of about $12 an hour, which comes to just about $25,000 for a full year. Its full-time workers also get stock grants which Amazon said last year had averaged about 9% of employees’ pay.

Agencies/Canadajournal