The American courier and parcel delivery group UPS will cut 12,000 jobs, its general director, Carol Tomé, announced Tuesday during the conference call to present the results.
This social plan will allow savings of a billion dollars in 2024, said the manager.
The company, headquartered in Atlanta (southeast), currently has around 500,000 employees.
Asked by AFP, UPS indicated that these job cuts would take place throughout the world.
Carol Tomé explained that this resizing of the workforce was the result of a reorganization of the group rather than the consequence of the slowdown in its activity in recent months.
“It’s a change in the way we work,” said the executive director. “So once volumes increase, we don’t anticipate reinstating those positions.”
UPS has initiated a massive program to automate its mail and package processing centers. In particular, he created a site called UPS Velocity, in Louisville (Kentucky), where part of the operations are carried out by some 700 robots.
The announcement comes as the company published, on Tuesday, a turnover down 7.8% in the fourth quarter, year-on-year, penalized by the deceleration of its activity.
“2023 was a unique and difficult year,” summarized Mme Tomé.
The market reacted badly to this unpleasant surprise and around 2:55 p.m. GMT, the stock lost 8.31%.
One of UPS’s main competitors, FedEx, cut some 29,000 jobs during its 2023 fiscal year, which ended at the end of May.
Parcel transport companies have been facing a reduction in flows since the end of 2022, after an outbreak following the coronavirus pandemic.
