At least 3,200 Amazon delivery drivers will be laid off by the end of April as the company keeps cutting ties with contractors
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More than 3,200 Amazon delivery drivers will be laid off by the end of April, Buzzfeed News reported.
Amazon's third-party delivery partners have announced thousands of layoffs in recent months as the company cuts ties with some of its contractors.
The 3,200 planned layoffs come after more than 2,000 delivery employees lost their jobs in October and Amazon Air Prime partners announced layoffs of nearly 3,000 workers in January and February.
Despite the layoffs, Amazon's delivery network is growing quickly as it hires new, small contractors.
Thousands of Amazon delivery drivers have been laid off in recent months — and it looks like many more workers will lose their jobs come spring.
More than 3,200 delivery drivers for Amazon will be let go by the end of April, Buzzfeed News reported.
Amazon has been cutting ties in recent months with some delivery contractors as it moves toward working with smaller, cheaper contractors, according to Buzzfeed.
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The 3,200 layoffs will come from several different contractors and follow more than 2,000 people losing their jobs in October from several of Amazon's delivery-service partners, or DSPs. These partners typically work exclusively for Amazon and deliver packages to customers' homes and businesses. DSPs are in charge of drivers' wages, insurance, health benefits, and vehicle maintenance.
The October layoffs included 900 workers in California and Texas from Letter Ride and more than 650 from Inpax in Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas.
"Sometimes the companies we contract with to deliver packages do not meet our bar for safety, performance or working conditions," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider. "When that happens we have a responsibility to terminate those relationships and work to find new partners."
Amazon gives laid-off workers the chance to apply for jobs with its other contractors. The company spokesperson said Amazon works to "ensure there is zero or very little net job loss" in the communities where it operates.
But as Buzzfeed News reported, no more than 60% of those workers are typically hired with other DSPs, Amazon's director of transportation compliance, Carey Richardson, recently said under oath.
Despite the contractor layoffs, Amazon's delivery network is growing quickly, as Business Insider's Hayley Peterson reported.
As of December, the company said it employed 800 third-party delivery partners that manage 75,000 drivers. Amazon operates 150 delivery stations in the US, which employ 90,000 workers.
The Amazon spokesperson said that more than 300 new DSPs have started working with Amazon in the past six months, creating job opportunities for nearly 15,000 drivers.
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