AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS) is moving ahead with 350 redundancies to its Irish workforce, after a global restructuring plan to cut 16,000 roles was announced last month. 

The tech giant has carried out a voluntary process which allowed employees to put themselves forward for redundancy up until yesterday.

Employees were recently informed that following their first meeting with employee representatives at the start of this month, the number of at-risk employees has been reduced from 361 to 350, and the number of proposed role eliminations has reduced from 59 to 48. 

AWS is a cloud computing platform run by Amazon that offers database storage and content delivery services to small businesses and larger clients worldwide, including major contracts with state agencies across the world. 

The firm has a large presence in Ireland where it operates numerous data centres, and a corporate office on Burlington Road in Dublin. Amazon employs almost 6,500 people here, and has been operating in the country for over 20 years.

AWS also outlined the selection criteria that will apply in cases where employees are made redundant in order for the number of proposed redundancies to be reached. 

The multinational said that employees will be divided according to their latest performance reviews. 

“Where the number of employees listed exceeds the number of redundancies required, tenure will be used as a tie-breaker, with those with the lowest tenure at Amazon being made redundant first,” the email to staff stated. 

The severance package on offer includes 5 weeks base pay per full year of service, with an upper limit of 75 weeks’ pay and a minimum of 12 weeks’ pay. 

AWS said in the event that an excess of employees opt for voluntary redundancy, leadership will make final decisions on who is selected. 

More TikTok staff at-risk due to less ‘human-led work’

TikTok's offices at The Sorting Office at the Docklands in Dublin.

It’s understood that a group of under 30 workers in TikTok’s Irish workforce have been told that their jobs are at-risk of redundancy in the last week as part of a further restructuring of the firm’s quality assurance teams globally. 

Workers were told that their jobs were at-risk in part due to advancements in “automation” and a reduced volume of “human-led quality review work”. 

Workers were informed that their individual roles were at-risk following an ‘at-risk’ meeting that took place on 12 March. 

TikTok informed the at-risk staff that the decision to reduce the overall requirement for personnel was based on the firm’s own projections around what kind of work there will be demand for within the company in the future.

Quality Analysts were told that while no final decision has been made on their roles, whether they are required at all is under consideration.

The Digital and Tech Worker Alliance branch of the Communications Workers’ Union told The Journal that it is supporting a number of affected workers in both the AWS and TikTok workforces. 

Organiser John Bohan said that while layoffs “are never good for workers” it’s important to acknowledge that Amazon is leading on a “voluntary first approach” which is the “best practice for headcount reduction”. 

He noted that there is a need for other tech firms in Ireland to follow this approach, including TikTok. 

“TikTok continues to cultivate an atmosphere of “fear and precarity” through its “drip feeding of compulsory “quiet redundancies”. 

“At a time of global instability, employers have a responsibility to provide workers with certainty and security,” he added. 

It’s understood that this latest small round of redundancies in Ireland is part of furthr global workforce restructuring by TikTok. 

In Ireland, when more than 30 employees are put at-risk of redundancy a firm has to notify the Department of Enterprise, which essentially makes the lay-offs public. 

The term ‘quiet layoffs’ refers to firms laying off groups of less than 30 employees. 

The Journal has previously reported on TikTok laying off smaller groups of employees.

Both AWS and TikTok have been contacted for comment.