Amazon.com Inc. offers Seattle employees a choice of smaller out-of-town offices, suggesting that the Covid-19 outbreak and a new tax on local employers have pushed the e-commerce giant to consider alternatives. to his hometown.
In a message to employees Thursday, Amazon asked which communities near Seattle, including Tacoma and Redmond, Wash., Would prefer. The title of the post, which was shared on Reddit and later removed, was “office work options.” Amazon declined to comment on the matter.
Amazon, which reported a total global workforce of nearly 877,000 as of June 30, has been expanding beyond Seattle for years. It is building a second major office center in the Virginia suburbs, near the nation’s capital, and has satellite locations in cities such as New York, Austin and Los Angeles.
Businesses in the US are weighing changes in their office presence after months of employees working from home. Manhattan financial firms have sought space in suburban New York, while Facebook has said that up to half of its employees could be working remotely in the next 10 years.
Amazon has threatened to focus job growth outside of Seattle due to a shaky relationship with city officials and new taxes imposed on large employers. The message suggests that Amazon could significantly reduce its presence in its hometown, where it employs about 50,000 people in a combination of offices it owns and rents. In 2019, it announced that it would relocate its global operations division, which oversees Amazon shipping and logistics, to nearby Bellevue, where it currently employs 3,000 people.
Those locations are seen as a service for employees tired of traveling to Seattle and as a way to reduce the company’s exposure to city taxes targeting large employers, the person said.
Two years ago, Amazon helped defeat an effort in Seattle to raise money for homeless services and affordable housing by imposing a per-employee tax on large companies.
Since then, the political climate has turned against the company after Amazon’s big spending on a Seattle City Council election fell through last year. In July, the council approved a new tax that will levy large companies on employees who make at least $ 150,000 a year. The tax is expected to raise more than $ 200 million annually and cost Amazon even more than the previous proposal.
