Reading List

Amazon, PepsiCo, others pledge jobs and trainings for refugees from Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech RSS feed.

Amazon, PepsiCo, others pledge jobs and trainings for refugees



Leading U.S. companies including Amazon, Pfizer, and PepsiCo have pledged to hire 20,000 refugees over the next three years.

The commitment was made at a summit organized by the Tent Partnership for Refugees, which was founded in 2016 by Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani. The announcement comes at a time when the U.S. government expects to welcome more Ukrainian refugees as the war with Russia continues, with several thousand fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan already in the country.

Amazon said it would hire 5,000 refugees in the next three years, the largest commitment among the 45 companies that pledged. PepsiCo and Pfizer will each hire 500 refugees.

“Being displaced from your homeland and having to start again somewhere is never easy,” Janet Saura, vice president employee relations, WW Amazon Stores and Corporate said. “Which is why we are committed to helping where we can, by providing refugees and other displaced people with access to meaningful employment.”

LinkedIn and Coursera pledged to work with refugee support agencies to offer training and networking for 6,000 and 7,500 refugees respectively so that they can find jobs in the U.S.

In 2021, Uber, Mastercard, and Facebook made commitments to hire 95,000 Afghan refugees. That plan initially faced some hurdles including the uncertain status of the Afghans airlifted to U.S. bases around the world and a government bureaucracy gutted by the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies.

Although significant, the commitments pale in comparison to the number of refugees already in the U.S. with more set to arrive. Nearly 90,000 Afghans have been resettled in the U.S. and in June, the Department of Homeland Security said 100,000 Ukrainians had been admitted in the country in the five months since the invasion and war with Russia began.