Amazon to cut 370 staff in Luxembourg as social plan signed

Amazon and staff delegates late on Friday signed a social plan that will see 370 jobs cut in Luxembourg.

“As we went into this week, there was more flexibility,” Prash Chandrasekhar, a representative of the staff delegation, told the Luxembourg Times after talks concluded. Staff delegates at the end of the first week of negotiations had said the company wasn’t showing enough effort to reduce redundancies.

Job cuts won’t come into effect until February. The details of compensation packages are confidential and will only be disclosed to staff who will be let go, Chandrasekhar said. However, “we compare favourably [to other social plans],” he said.

“370 is a very big number but considering where we started, it feels a little better,” the staff representative said. “It’s still a big impact and will put pressure on Luxembourg,” he said.

The process between management and the staff delegation in Luxembourg began on 1 December, after Amazon announced in October it would cut around 14,000 jobs worldwide in its corporate workforce, in a major restructuring.

The company and delegates had 15 calendar days to strike a deal.

Staff in a joint message from the leadership team and staff delegation sent late on Friday were informed of the cuts.

“Our immediate focus will be on implementing the agreed measures and providing support to impacted employees throughout this transition,” the statement, shared by an Amazon spokesperson with the media, said.

The spokesperson said the company is not providing any further statement at this time.

“We remain committed to ensuring that the implementation of this plan is handled with care, clarity, and in full compliance with the local employment law,” the statement said. “For those covered by the social plan, we have agreed to a comprehensive package that goes well beyond industry benchmarks and comparable local agreements in Luxembourg.”

Processes like performance reviews and the Pivot programme are unrelated to the social plan, Chandrasekhar said, and those continue. “We are unable to influence those,” he said.

‘Strategic partner’

Amazon employed 4,370 people in Luxembourg at the start of this year, according to data from the country’s official statistics office Statec, making it one of the biggest employers in the country.

The latest round of layoffs comes after the company started cutting around 27,000 positions worldwide in late 2022. Amazon never confirmed how many posts in Luxembourg were impacted at the time.

The retail giant employed 3,960 people in Luxembourg in early 2022, according to Statec, growing to 4,570 in 2023 but then dropping to 4,270 at the start of 2024.

Prime Minister Luc Frieden met with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in Seattle in November.

“While Amazon did not mention any numbers, it did confirm its intentions to downsize globally,” a spokesperson for the prime minister’s office told the Luxembourg Times at the time in response to questions about the talks. “In this light, its CEO Andy Jassy gave the prime minister assurances that Luxembourg remains the strategic partner in Europe, while emphasizing the importance of its headquarter activities for the group in the country.”

Amazon “has and will continue to recruit in Luxembourg” as indicated by the current and past job offers notified to employment agency Adem, the prime minister’s office said after the November meeting. There are currently 56 jobs open in Luxembourg on Amazon’s recruitment platform.

After reports first broke that the company was seeking to cut 470 jobs, around 10% of its workforce in the country, Frieden instructed Labour Minister Georges Mischo to seek talks with Amazon to explain “the possibilities of Luxembourg labour law, which they may not be aware of.”