UPS cuts 20,000 jobs while reducing Amazon deliveries

The Atlanta-based company will be providing its laid off employees with various benefits, including pensions and healthcare.

The layoffs are part of UPS’s network configuration plan, which also confirms the upcoming closures of over 90 more facilities in the future.

The changes are part of the company’s $3.5 billion cost reduction target for 2025, aiming to reach a 12 percent US operational margin by next year.

UPS, which is one of the largest parcel delivery companies in the US, currently has 490,000 employees, around 330,000 of which are represented by the Teamsters union.

The union was the first to announce the buyout, calling it an ‘illegal violation’ of the national contract in which UPS committed to create 22,500 jobs.

‘Our members cannot be bought off and we will not allow them to be sold out. UPS needs to live up to the existing contract. They must honor their commitments,’ said Sean O’Brien, general president of the union.

The company concluded that its profit margins from Amazon deliveries profit were too small, and it wanted to focus on other markets like healthcare and international deliveries.

‘The world has not been faced with such enormous potential impacts to trade in more than 100 years,’ said CEO Carol Tomé. Deliveries for Amazon make up around 12 percent of UPS’s revenue.

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