Amazon on Monday lifted its ban preventing sellers from shipping non-essential items to its warehouses.
The move comes a month after Amazon told sellers that it might only accept “household staples, medical supplies and other high-demand products” in order that it could specialise in shipping essentials during the coronavirus pandemic.
Amazon had curtailed what its sellers could ship to its warehouses after being inundated with orders amid coronavirus panic-buying. The company’s two-day shipping service has slipped to as long as a month in some cases, with workers at the e-commerce giant’s fulfillment centers struggling to stay up with demand.
While delivery demand continues to soar, Amazon now has more workers to select up the slack. Last month, the tech company hired 100,000 additional workers last month and it’s plans to rent another 75,000 workers in April.
The Seattle company will limit what percentage items third-party sellers can store in Amazon warehouses, however.
“Products are going to be limited by quantity to enable us to continue prioritizing products and protecting employees, while also ensuring most selling partners can ship goods into our facilities,” Amazon told the Wall Street Journal.
Amazon on Monday also announced that it might expand its temporary $2 hourly raise to more workers.
“We know many of us are economically impacted as jobs in areas like hospitality, restaurants and travel are lost or furloughed as a part of this crisis and that we welcome anyone out of labor to hitch us at Amazon until things return to normal and their past employer is in a position to bring them back,” Amazon said during a blog post.
Amazon’s hiring spree comes because the company has faced harsh criticism for the conditions its warehouse workers toil under during the pandemic.
The company last week vowed to start out testing warehouse workers for the coronavirus amid complaints that it hasn’t been doing enough to guard employees.
“To date, we’ve remodeled 150 significant process changes at sites round the world to make sure the health and safety of our teams,” Amazon said during a blog post, pertaining to its distributing masks to employees and conducting employee temperature checks.
“A next step could be regular testing of all employees, including those showing no symptoms,” the corporate said while acknowledging a shortage of tests.
The company said it’s seeking to start out by “building incremental testing capacity,” employing a team of “research scientists and program managers to procurement specialists and software engineers” who have moved off their normal jobs to figure on this initiative.
The company said it hopes to “start testing small numbers of our battlefront employees soon.”
