Amazon, Hilton, Mariott and other big companies promise tens of thousands of jobs for refugees in Europe

Around 40 companies, including behemoths like Amazon, pledged at a summit in Paris on Monday to hire tens of thousands of refugees across Europe, where the war in Ukraine has sparked the biggest crisis. displaced since World War II. In total, these promises of hiring and training over the next three years announced by 41 large companies will have “a direct impact on 250,000 refugees”, for whom this should generate “each year more than two billion euros in income”, Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of the NGO Tent Partnership for Refugees, who organized the event on the eve of World Refugee Day, told AFP.

In detail, the firm promises of employment must concern the recruitment of 13,680 refugees. Amazon has thus announced its intention to hire at least 5,000 refugees in Europe over three years, the hotel chains Hilton and Marriott 1,500 each or even 500 for the French multinational Teleperformance. In addition, the main temp agencies (Adecco, ManpowerGroup, Randstad) have also pledged to "connect 152,000 refugees to jobs", while other companies have promised to train "more than 86,000 refugees", according to a press release. of Tent.

These promises, which should make it possible to respond to "labour shortages" while "Europe is currently facing its biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War", constitute "the ever taken by corporations to advance the economic integration of refugees,” according to the organization. This level of commitment is partly explained by the wave of emotion generated by the movement of displaced Ukrainians, believes Hamdi Ulukaya. A former refugee himself, the founder of Tent became a billionaire in the United States thanks to his agribusiness Chobani. “People support these Ukrainian refugee women. What happened to them had a huge impact on the companies that made those pledges,” he said, hoping the pledges create “momentum” among small businesses.