Amazon.com Inc. offers employees in Seattle a choice of smaller offices outside the city, suggesting that the Covid-19 outbreak and a new local employer tax have driven the e-commerce giant to consider alternatives to its birthplace.
In a message to employees Thursday, Amazon asked which communities in Seattle – including Tacoma and Redmond, Washington – they prefer. The title of the post, which was shared on Reddit and later deleted, was “Options for Office Workplace.” Amazon declined to comment on the matter.
Amazon, which as of June 30 reported a total global workforce of nearly 877,000, has been expanding outside Seattle for years. It is building a second large office center in suburban Virginia near the nation’s capital city and has satellite locations in cities including New York, Austin and Los Angeles.
The company has threatened to focus on employment growth outside of Seattle because of a rocky relationship with city officials and new taxes imposed on large employers. The report suggests that Amazon’s presence at its birthplace could significantly shrink, where it counts about 50,000 people in a mix of offices it owns and rents. In 2019, it announced that it would move its global operations division, which oversees Amazon’s shipping and logistics, to nearby Bellevue, where it currently employs 3,000 people.
Even before the pandemic, Amazon considered building more satellite offices outside the city, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company plans to expand the Bellevue offices, which it has had since 2017. Such locations are seen as a facility for employees who are tired of traveling to Seattle and as a way to reduce the company’s exposure to the city’s tax on large employers, said the person who did not ask. to be identified on private matters.
Two years ago, Amazon helped thwart an effort in Seattle to raise money for homeless services and affordable housing by imposing a tax per employee on large companies. The “capital tax” would have raised about $ 47 million annually.
The political climate has since shifted against the company following Amazon’s huge spending on a Seattle City Council election last year. In July, the council passed a new levy that will allow large companies to tax employees who make at least $ 150,000 a year. The tax is expected to increase by more than $ 200 million annually and cost Amazon even more than the previous proposal.
– With the help of Matt Day
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