What you need to know
- Amazon uses smaller 'delivery service providers' for last-mile deliveries to its customers.
- The three companies in question have been engulfed in scandal due to pedestrian deaths.
- The move will lead to as many as 2,000 layoffs.
Three of Amazon's delivery service providers — Inpax Shipping Solutions, Sheard-Loman Transport, and Letter Ride LLC — will be laying off more than 2,000 employees combined, reports BuzzFeed News, as the retail giant decides to take its business elsewhere.
Amazon has begun attempting to more directly control the provision of delivery services for its products through the use of an expanding network of delivery service providers like those above. The company controls most aspects of their operations and accounts for an overwhelmingly majority of the small firms' business.
The three firms in question were recently embroiled in scandal, with their drivers involved in at least two pedestrian deaths, while a 21-year-old Sheard-Loman driver was the victim of a fatal accident.
In what has become a hallmark of any Amazon story involving overworked employees, the report alleges drivers were required to meet strenous targets of delivering as many as 300 packages a day. Another omnipresent detail in any story involving Amazon workers these days: the drivers reported being forced to skip lunches and having to urinate in bottles to keep up with the breakneck pace of work required of them.
Amazon's issued the following statement regarding the development:
"We work with a variety of carrier partners to get packages to Amazon customers and we regularly evaluate our partnerships. We have ended our relationship with these companies, and drivers are being supported with opportunities to deliver Amazon packages with other local Delivery Service Partners."
This corresponds with reports from Inpax drivers who claim new delivery vendors operating out of the same warehouses are already hiring the laid-off drivers. And it's business as usual for Amazon.
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