Blog

Amazon has, in fact, quickly grown to be one of Houston, Texas’ top employers. It will add many distribution centers and thousands of employees in the past few years as people turned to online shopping. This would be the pandemic and demand for its services surged.

Now, the online retailer is trying to make it easier for employees to gain new job skills. It is through partnerships with an expanded network of colleges and universities, including two in Houston.

Amazon has named nine Texas colleges as partner schools in its Career Choice Upskilling program. They are designed to help hourly employees advance their careers at Amazon or elsewhere. More than 750,000 operations employees in the U.S. are eligible for fully funded college tuition. They include most of the company’s more than 20,000 employees in the Houston area. Amazon is going to cover the cost of tuition and books.

Amazon Employees – Free Tuition

Free tuition is a perk that does help Amazon in hiring but the company also views it as the right thing to do. This is what Evan Luscher, director of operations at Amazon’s newest robotics Fulfillment Center in Houston. Also, employees, who do earn starting wages of about $18 an hour. They are not limiting to studying fields that are relating to their jobs. Plus they aren’t requiring to pay tuition. If they leave the company after graduating.

There are 3,500 people working alongside robots to sort at the local facility. They will select and then ship packages to customers. It has an on-site classroom where the educational programming is going eventually be offering, Luscher said.

The hourly employees in Texas are going to have access to education in Houston Community College and other local colleges. It is under the new partnerships. The schools are among Amazon’s more than 140 university partners and additional online providers.