As part of the previously announced layoffs, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a public employee news release Wednesday that the number of Amazon layoffs will balloon to more than 18,000.
He said Amazon's layoffs on Jan. 18 would largely affect the company's e-commerce and human resources departments. Jassy's note did not specify in which countries the cuts would be made.
CBC News reached out to the company to ask if the layoffs would affect Canadian employees. In response, the company included a note from Jassy.
The cuts amount to six percent of Amazon's roughly 300,000-person corporate workforce, and represent a swift turn for a retailer that recently doubled its base pay ceiling to compete more aggressively for talent.
Amazon employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide, including warehouse workers, and is the second-largest private employer in the U.S. behind Walmart.
Shares rose 1.8 percent to $86.71 in premarket trading on Thursday.
A spokesman for London-based union GMB said it was aware of the job cuts, but its members had not been affected by the plan.
Union members working at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry, central England, plan to strike on January 25 over a wage dispute with the e-commerce giant.
Laurent Degoussee of France's SUD union said the plan would not affect the company's FBA France unit.
Douglas Harper, spokesman for Spain's largest trade union CCOO, criticized the company for its complete lack of information.
"We don't know how this will affect us in Spain," Harper told Reuters. "We can assume that this is the first step preceding layoffs in the rest of operations, not just the corporate workforce, but we don't have any official data."
Source - CBC News
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