Uber to cut 3,000 more jobs amid COVID-19 pandemic

San Francisco, May 19 (IANS) Uber said that the company is cutting about 3,000 more jobs amid COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce our workforce by around 3,000 people, and to reduce investments in several non-core projects,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in a letter to employees on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Along with the 3,700 jobs the company announced to cut earlier this month, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing company is laying off 25 per cent of its staff.

Uber is also closing or consolidating some 45 offices globally, including its Pier 70 office in San Francisco, a branch responsible for its experimental projects like self-driving cars. Over the next 12 months, it will begin the process of moving its Asia-Pacific headquarters out of Singapore to a new location “in a market where we operate our services,” according to the company.

Uber will reduce its costs by over US $1 billion a year by these actions, the company said.

“We began 2020 on an accelerated path to total company profitability. Then the coronavirus hit us with a once-in-a-generation public health and economic crisis,” Khosrowshahi noted.

“If there is one silver lining regarding this crisis, it is that Eats has become an even more important resource for people at home and for restaurants,” he said. “We no longer need to look far for the next enormous growth opportunity, we are sitting right on top of one.”

Khosrowshahi also cautioned that the accelerating Eats business now still doesn’t come close to covering the expenses. The profitability “is not going to happen overnight.”

–IANS

rt/