Amazon employees are petitioning CEO Andy Jassy to cancel his return-to-office mandate and calling out his about-face on remote work. In a petition to Jassy sent late Tuesday, Amazon workers decried that their trust in the company’s leaders had been “shattered.”
After Jassy told workers in a memo last Friday that workers would be expected to return to the office for at least three days a week beginning May 1, employees began to mobilize in an effort to get him to change his mind. Since October 2021, Amazon had allowed managers to determine how often employees needed to be in the office. According to CNBC, frustrated employees are currently drafting a petition to Jassy and other members of the Amazon executive team asking for remote work and flexibility to be protected, underscoring that the RTO policy would impact the lives of employees who had planned on location flexibility.
“Many employees trusted these statements and planned for a life where their employer wouldn’t force them to return to the office,” the employees wrote in the draft, which was obtained by Insider. “The RTO mandate shattered their trust in Amazon’s leaders.”
A draft of the petition asks Jassy and Amazon’s executive team to cancel the company’s return-to-office plans and institute a new policy “that allows employees to work remotely or more flexibly, if they choose to do so, as their team and job role permits.”
In addition to the petition, more than 14,000 workers have joined an internal Slack channel to advocate for remote work and present their concerns about the company’s plans, CNBC reported.
Gizmodo reached out to Amazon for comment on the worker pushback to Jassy’s plans on Wednesday but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
In the memo, Jassy said that Amazon’s executive team had changed its mind over what it thought was “optimal” over the course of the pandemic. Being in the office allowed workers to “absorb” Amazon’s culture and collaborate in easier and more effective ways, the CEO stated. It also enabled people to learn from each other and fomented greater team connections, he said.
“It’s not simple to bring many thousands of employees back to our offices around the world, so we’re going to give the teams that need to do that work some time to develop a plan. We know that it won’t be perfect at first, but the office experience will steadily improve over the coming months (and years) as our real estate and facilities teams smooth out the wrinkles,” Jassy said.
Not everyone will be required to be in the office three days a week, he pointed out, but the exceptions will be limited. Overall, Amazon didn’t provide many details about how its return-to-office would work, and told employees it would be finalising plans in the coming weeks.