Amazon has suspended a program that pays up to $5,000 to warehouse workers who quit after peak seasons: report

• Amazon's pay-to-quit program helps the company cut down its workforce after the holiday season.
• Launched in 2014, it offers up to $5,000 to employees who leave and agree never to return.

Amazon has suspended a program that offers warehouse employees up to $5,000 to quit after busy seasons, according to a report from The Information.

Launched in 2014, the program is known as "Pay to Quit" or "The Offer" internally, according to The Information. Those who take the offer must agree to never work for Amazon again.

The pay-to-quit program helps the ecommerce giant quickly cut down its workforce after the busy holiday season, per The Information. It also helps the company shed disengaged workers, Business Insider's Hayley Peterson reported in 2018.

Under the program, Amazon offers a $2,000 payout to workers who have been with the company for one year, which increases by $1,000 for each year of service to top out at $5,000, according to founder Jeff Bezos' annual letter to shareholders in 2014. The program is modeled after a similar one at Zappos, an Amazon subsidiary, Bezos wrote in the letter.

The suspension of the program after the holiday season coincides with a labor crunch in the US that has hit large companies employing supply-chain workers especially hard.

Amazon has also been facing high turnover rates for hourly employees due to burnout, according to a major New York Times investigation published in June.

Amazon did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.