Amazon created 6,000 new jobs in Europe

Amazon created 6,000 new full-time jobs in Europe last year to respond to booming demand, which was bigger than ever in Europe, says Amazon. Now 32,000 people work for the ecommerce giant in the European Union. These jobs are created in logistics centers, customer service, software development, supply chain management and design.

The 6,000 new jobs in 2014 are the highest number of jobs Amazon has created in one year in Europe since it launched Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de in 1998. “We are still in a phase of investment and look forward to being able to fill more positions in 2015,” said Xavier Garambois, Amazon vice president for EU retail.

Most of the new jobs created in Germany
Around 20% of the new jobs were created in Germany, which is Amazon’s second-biggest market after the United States. In Germany it employs 10,000 warehouse staff plus more than 10,000 seasonal workers. The next most new positions were created in the United Kingdom, while the rest was spread around the other European countries where Amazon is active (France, Italy, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands).

Strikes in Germany
Germany is also the country where Amazon is facing some serious problems in the area of pay and working conditions. A series of strikes have been taking place since May 2013, when trade union Verdi started trying to force Amazon to raise pay for its warehouse workers. Verdi argued that the current situation isn’t in accordance with collective bargaining agreements across Germany’s mail order and retail industry. Amazon however says it regards warehouse staff as logistics workers and that they receive above-average pay by the standards of that industry.

This is a documentary from the BBC, called “Amazon: The Truth Behind The Click”, that shows how a BBC reporter works undercover as a picker.