Amazon delays return to office to 2022 due to COVID

The Seattle Times, which detailed the tech giant's delay in returning to offices from internal messages, reports that unlike its Seattle-area rival Microsoft, Amazon will not mandate employees receive the COVID-19 vaccine before they return to the office.

“As we continue to closely watch conditions related to COVID-19, we are adjusting our guidance for corporate employees in the US and other countries where we had previously anticipated our employees would begin coming in regularly the week of September 7,” Amazon human resources chief Beth Galetti wrote in an email to employees. “We are now extending this date to January 3, 2022.” Microsoft announced earlier this week it was pushing back its office reopening to October and will require employees to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus to enter the company's US offices and other worksites.

Amazon continues to encourage employees to receive the vaccine, but will not require it, said spokesperson Jose Negrete.

The delay affects the roughly 60,000 people working in Amazon's offices in Seattle and Bellevue, Washington, as well as tens of thousands more corporate Amazon employees worldwide. Amazon is Washington state's largest private employer, and the delay in the return to office work will be a blow to the many downtown Seattle businesses that rely on the trade of tech workers.

The vast majority of Amazon's 1.2 million-person global workforce is still expected to show up on-site to pack boxes, sort merchandise and load and unload trucks at Amazon warehouses.