“Amazon supports the effort to reform the national cannabis policy”: this is the surprising title of an announcement made by the communicators of the «everything store» on his corporate blog.
While cannabis use is legal in some US states, it is not at the federal level. This is where the e-commerce giant engages its forces, deploys its lobbyists and now seeks to weigh the scales, in order to standardize its hiring policies across the country. In June, the firm was also stepping in the door and on its own abandoned cannabis consumption tests for its future enlistments.
Because if the firm cites real reasons of equity, the pre-employment consumer tests “Have a disproportionate impact on people of color and act as a barrier to employment”, its strongest motivation is perhaps more pragmatic: Amazon needs arms, which it is struggling to find in an American job market in the midst of a labor shortage.
On September 14, Amazon announced that it was seeking to hire a whopping 125,000 additional workers for all of its American warehouses, as well as 40,000 people in management positions or in non-logistics branches.
The packet
At the same time, she announced to increase her own minimum wage to 18 dollars an hour (15.3 euros an hour) – a decision which, competition obliges, will oblige all the large employers to follow and will benefit the company. entire American workforce.
The firm also announced new, unprecedented bonuses, sometimes in the form of cash (up to $ 3,000 upon hiring in some places) or by the reimbursement, if necessary, of the full tuition fees of its employee-students. . In short: to continue to grow as it sees fit and ride the incredible growth boost that the pandemic has offered it, the company is going all out, because it has no other choice.
In this context of complicated hires, the consumption of cannabis seems to be a major obstacle. In early September, Bloomberg announced that Amazon was also asking its logistics contractors to make public that they were dropping pre-employment drug testing – asking some questions about insurance and liability.
Bloomberg also specifies that Amazon, to defend its choice – without sourcing the supporting figure – that if it stuck to the tests relating to the consumption of opiates and amphetamines, it could apply to 400% more applicants.
This time, the company explains in black and white that its advertisement only concerns positions “Not regulated by the laws of the Department of Transport”. It will take that, and undoubtedly more, to reach the wage bill of 925,000 souls that it expects to reach by the end of the year in the United States – in the world, it is more than a million and half of people who should then depend on the giant.
–
