Amazon to pay warehouse employees $5,000 to quit

SEATTLE, April 11 (UPI) -- Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in a letter to investors, spoke of a new initiative to offer employees up to $5,000 to quit, to ensure Amazon only retains people who really want to work there.

The "Pay to Quit" program will be ensure the company retains employees committed to working at Amazon, even as the company continues to add more workers and new warehouses, or as Amazon likes to call them "fulfillment centers."

"The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want," Bezos wrote in the letter. "In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don't want to be isn't healthy for the employee or the company."

Amazon said the idea came from Zappos, the online footwear and clothing retailer Amazon purchased in 2009.

Bezos said the offer will be made under the headline "Please Don't Take This Offer," and will offer to pay its employees once a year to quit. Employees will be offered $2,000 to quit and that amount will be increased by $1,000 every year until it reaches $5,000.

"We hope they don’t take the offer; we want them to stay," Bezos wrote.

Amazon is in the process of adding fulfillment centers to reduce shipping times to customers. At the end of last year, Amazon had 96 warehouses employing 117,300 full-time and part-time employees, up almost 33 percent from employment levels a year earlier.

[Amazon Investor Letter] [CNN Money]