Amazon Says It’s Relaxing Marijuana Policy To ‘Become Earth’s Best Employer’

Amazon has mentioned it would additional loosen up its marijuana coverage for workers and is gearing as much as assist nationwide laws to legalise the drug. Citing its determination from June 2021, the American e-commerce large mentioned it has “reinstated the employment eligibility” for former staff and candidates terminated or deferred throughout random or pre-employment marijuana screenings. It mentioned screening job candidates for hashish makes it arduous for the corporate to develop its workforce. Amazon mentioned it needs to assist reform America’s hashish coverage because it needs to “become Earth’s Best Employer”.

Amazon’s human sources senior vice chairman Beth Galetti said in a blog post that the corporate was making these modifications for 3 causes and outlined them.

Stating the primary purpose, Galetti mentioned that an rising variety of US states had been transferring to “some level of cannabis legalisation.” Second, out there information indicated that pre-employment marijuana testing disproportionately impacted folks of color. And third, Amazon was “always looking to hire” new staff and eliminating pre-employment testing for hashish, and within the course of, permitting the corporate to develop the applicant pool.

“Today’s status quo is unfair and untenable,” added Galetti, noting the problem for firms in creating hashish guidelines given the discrepancy between nationwide regulation and native statutes. “We look forward to working with Congress and other supporters to secure necessary reform of the nation’s cannabis laws.”

Out of the entire 50 US states, 19 have to date legalised leisure use of marijuana. Connecticut was the last state to do so in June this yr. The identical month, Amazon introduced that it will drop testing candidates for some job profiles for the drug. The solely candidates it determined to display had been these making use of for positions regulated by the Department of Transportation, equivalent to truck drivers and heavy gear operators. It then started actively supporting the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act).

Aiming to “become Earth’s Best Employer”, Galetti wrote that “we know that our local communities and future generations need us to be better every day” to realize that feat.