Big Tech employees across Europe are being offered elaborate severance packages as part of a widespread redundancy push by the likes of Meta, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet.
Bloomberg reported that the US tech giants, complacent with relatively low employee protections in the US, are coming up against strict labour protections in France and Germany in particular.
A Google representative told Bloomberg: “We have been working carefully and individually through each country where reductions are taking place to fully adhere to local legal requirements, which vary per location, are complex, and take time,” a Google spokesperson said in response to questions from Bloomberg.
Google has approximately 1,600 employees in Paris alone, with some senior managers reportedly being offered as much as 12 months' pay to take redundancy, compared to one-month redundancy packages years’ prior.
Amazon employees in Luxembourg are being offered a month’s salary per year of service as part of their severance packages.
In the UK, where employee protections are not as strong, up to 16% of Google’s workforce is expected to be let go in what has been to largest global headcount reduction in the tech sector on record.
Parul Koul, executive chair of the Alphabet Workers Union, said that US workers are taking note of their continental counterparts.
“It is inspiring for people in the US to see things are different in other places – it’s a blueprint for what people can fight for,” said Koul.