Amazon reportedly offers France managers 'year's pay' to quit

Online retail giant Amazon is reportedly offering senior French staff up to a year's pay to get them to leave as it looks to axe thousands of workers in the European Union.

Amazon wants to slash 27,000 jobs in an effort to bolster its balance sheet after a slowdown in internet shopping as Covid-19 restrictions are wound down. It announced layoffs of 18,000 people in January and a further 9,000 last month.

Google is also offering generous severance packages in France, as it looks to cut 6%, or 12,000 people, from its global workforce. Strong worker protections in EU member countries make it harder for US firms to utilise their standard firing procedures with minimal payoffs or resistance from affected staff.

Google is currently in talks with employee works councils in France and Germany, bargaining with them ahead of implementing job reductions, Bloomberg reported.

“We have been working carefully and individually through each country where reductions are taking place to fully adhere to local legal requirements, which vary per location, are complex, and take time," s Google spokesman said.

In the UK Google is planning to lay off around 500 of its 8,000 staff in the UK, according to the Unite union.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com