Amazon will spend $500 million on holiday bonuses for employees

Amazon.com will pay the employees who pack and deliver its goods a one-time bonus of up to $300, extra compensation that comes as the company faces a union drive and criticism from others for rolling back pandemic hazard pay.

The company said on Thursday that it would pay full-time operations workers $300, and part-timers $150, if they are employed by the e-commerce giant for the entire month of December. The cost to Amazon will amount to about $500 million, logistics chief Dave Clark said in a corporate blog post.

Like many of its peers in retail who had offered hazard pay as an incentive for workers to keep coming in during the pandemic, Amazon ended its bonuses after an economic upheaval swelled the ranks of job seekers. The company ended its $2-an-hour bump for hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers at the end of May. In June, it paid one-time bonuses of as much as $500.