Amazon adding 100,000 more employees in new hiring spree

Amazon said on Monday that it will hire another 100,000 workers, its fourth such run of hiring this year.

The positions will include part-time and full-time positions in both the U.S. and Canada, according to Reuters. The retail giant is opening 100 new warehouse and operations locations in September, and several of the newly-created positions will reportedly be at the new locations.

The company has thrived during the coronavirus pandemic as consumers increasingly rely on home delivery. Amazon saw its revenue shoot up by 40 percent in the last quarter and it recorded high profits. 

“We will continue to deploy technology where appropriate, starting from a safety perspective [and] where we can improve our overall operation,” Alicia Boler Davis, Amazon’s vice president of global customer fulfillment, told Reuters.

Boler Davis declined to say whether automation will mean fewer workers per warehouse are needed. “We don’t look at it as an ‘either/or,’” she told Reuters.

The announcement comes the same month that the company announced 33,000 job openings, primarily in its corporate and technology divisions. Earlier in the spring, Amazon also announced a total of 175,000 new operations positions.

Boler Davis told the news service the company is still assessing its need for seasonal workers during the holiday season, when demand typically spikes.

Despite Amazon’s hiring spree during the pandemic, it has also been criticized for its handling of worker safety during the crisis.

Christian Smalls, a worker at Amazon’s Staten Island, N.Y., warehouse, said that he was fired after leading a walkout in protest of pandemic working conditions and lack of safety measures. Amazon has maintained Smalls was fired for coming to work instead of self-isolating after being told he had been potentially exposed to the virus.