Amazon on Tuesday announced that employees whose work can be done from home can continue doing so until June 2021. The move comes after other large companies like Ford, Facebook and Google also extended the WFH option until mid-2021.
"Employees who work in a role that can effectively be done from home are welcome to do so until June 30, 2021", an Amazon spokeswoman said in an emailed statement, adding that the guidance is applicable globally.
The announcement comes three weeks after Amazon said over 19,000 of its frontline employees in the US had contracted COVID-19. Amazon noted that this estimate was 42 per cent lower than the expected number based on the estimated rate of infection among the general population. The company said it was scaling up its testing rates, with plans to increase test to 50,000 a day across 650 sites by November.
In July, Amazon had said that employees whose work could be done remotely could do so until January, 2021, adding that its offices would remain open and available to all employees. “We continue to do everything we can to ensure a safe office environment including temperature screenings upon entry, physical distancing guidelines, providing face coverings, and enhanced cleaning protocols,” the company had said in a blog post.
Amazon had faced criticism for keeping its warehouses open. Athena, a coalition of activist groups campaigning for greater regulations on Amazon, accused the company of allowing COVID-19 to "spread like wildfire in its facilities, risking the health of tens of thousands of people who work at Amazon—as well as their family members, neighbours, and friends."
Earlier, Facebook had announced that its employees can continue working from home until July, while Google extended the same till June. On October 9, Ford Motor Company announced it was extending the WFH option for its employees till June.
