Labour Ministry Summons Amazon Over Layoffs, Retail Giant Claims ‘Didn't Fire Anyone’

New Delhi: The Union Labour Ministry summoned US ecommerce giant Amazon’s India arm on Friday concerning alleged violation of labour laws and reported lay-offs. Responding to that, Amazon reportedly said it did not sack any employee, and instead, the layoffs "were actually voluntary resignations by employees as they opted for its separation programme on their own after accepting the severance package."

The response was submitted to the deputy chief labour commissioner in Bengaluru. The company held that the nature of resignations was ‘voluntary’ thereby denying all reports alleging it had fired many employees in recent layoffs.

According to a report in The Economic Times, Amazon has set a deadline of November 30 to complete the layoff process.

After the details became public, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) called for an enquiry against the multi-corporation giant as the layoffs would affect thousands of lives, including employees and their families.

According to reports, no NITES representative was present in the meeting with the Labour Commissioner. The employee union said it had written to the labour ministry to hold another meeting and was awaiting the ministry’s response, a NITES spokesperson told Inc42.com.

Incidentally, it was after receiving the NITES petition that the Labour Ministry sought a response from Amazon.

The ET report adds that "Amazon India has maintained that it tends to review the worker strength across verticals every year. The company indulges in this to see if it needs to realign anything in order to accommodate the changing environment."

The layoffs are part of a global change that Amazon has initiated, which is meeting worker resistance. The job cuts are going to continue till 2023; while the exact details are unknown, several media reports in the US suggested that the company may fire as many as 10,000 employees.

Amazon layoffs are not an isolated incident in the tech industry. Recently, Facebook also announced that it would cut jobs by thousands after its investment in new Meta projects could not take off, and the company suffered huge losses. Social media platform Twitter, after being bought by Elon Musk, also fired a number of employees, while some left voluntarily, predicting a poor state of affairs under Musk's leadership.