Amazon Pulls Back on Return-to-Office Mandate Due to Lack of Office Space
By Isabelle Durso December 19, 2024 12:21 pm
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Amazon (AMZN) has pulled back on its strict return-to-office mandate for 2025 due to a lack of enough office space to house its workers.
The tech giant, which told its staff in September they must return to their desks five days a week starting in January, is now postponing that order for as long as four months since Amazon’s existing office portfolio can’t accommodate that, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news.
Cities in which Amazon faces a shortage of office space include Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Houston and Nashville, Tenn., meaning a good portion of Amazon’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees may have to adjust their work plans in the new year, Bloomberg reported.
A spokesperson for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Bloomberg quoted a spokesperson as saying the “vast majority of employees” would be starting in-office on Jan. 2.
The delay is even affecting the tech giant’s workers in New York City.
In fact, a source told Bloomberg some staff in Amazon’s Midtown office in the Lord & Taylor Building at 424-434 Fifth Avenue may not have space to work in-office the full week until May.
But Amazon has received some help in Manhattan after WeWork signed a 303,741-square-foot lease with Vornado Realty Trust for office space for Amazon at 330 West 34th Street earlier this month.
However, it seems the company is struggling to hold enough office space for employees to work in-person just three days per week, which has been Amazon’s general policy for over a year, Bloomberg reported.
Some workers have complained about sharing desks and not having enough conference rooms for calls or meetings, sources told Bloomberg.
The news of the delay comes as a bit of a surprise, as Amazon’s initial return-to-office announcement caused a ripple effect of other strict mandates across several U.S. companies, including Starbucks, AT&T and Sweetgreen.
But return-to-office isn’t the only problem the tech giant is dealing with. Thousands of Amazon workers at seven U.S. warehouses — including in New York City, Atlanta and San Francisco — went on strike Thursday days before Christmas, calling on Amazon to begin negotiations with the workers’ union, Reuters reported.
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.
