Amazon on Thursday pledged to spend $700 million over the next few years to retrain 100,000 of its US workers.

The company's Upskilling 2025 program is one of the biggest retraining programs announced in the US. It's meant to help a whole third of Amazon's current US workforce of roughly 300,000 people transition into higher skilled and higher demand positions, including data mapping specialists, data scientists, business analysts and security engineers.

The program appears to be an acknowledgement of the rapid change to work, particularly in Amazon warehouses, where employees' tasks routinely change thanks to new robots and technologies being added. Several researchers now predict millions of low-skill jobs will be wiped out by robotics and automation in the coming decade, with Amazon facing criticism for introducing a lot of this new tech.

This work is also happening at a time of historically low unemployment in the US, forcing fast-growing companies like Amazon to figure out new ways to fill their most vital positions, in part by using the people they already employ.

Amazon continues to face persistent complaints from unions, former employees and advocacy groups that it treats its warehouse workers poorly. The Upskilling program is another benefit the company can show it's offering -- including $15 minimum wage and up to 20 weeks paid parental leave -- to counter those claims. 

Many unions typically don't see these benefits as enough and claim these employees need better protections from being fired or overworked. Amazon employees in the US are not unionized.

As part of Upskilling 2025, Amazon is launching Amazon Technical Academy, which will help non-technical employees transition into software engineering roles. Associate2Tech is another new program that will help warehouse workers retrain into technical jobs, regardless of their previous IT experience.

Career Choice, a tuition program for fulfillment center workers, will be expanded, as will Amazon Apprenticeship, a classroom training and on-the-job apprenticeship at Amazon.