The online retail giant Amazon has said that it will create a further 7,000 jobs in the UK this year to meet the growing demand of its services
Amazon has said that it had already added 3,000 roles in the UK so far this year, meaning that by the end of the year the company will have created 10,000 new jobs in the country.
It will be taking its total permanent UK workforce to over 40,000 employees.
Amazon has said that the new jobs will be on a permanent basis and will be paying a minimum of £9.50 an hour. The retail giant will also be recruiting 20,000 workers for seasonal jobs during the festive period.
This comes after the health secretary has defended Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister amid concerns regarding his attitudes towards women and homosexuality, saying: “Well, he’s also an expert in trade.”
The company has been facing criticism for a long time from workers’ unions over the way it treats staff and health and safety.
The COVID-19 crisis, as well as the national lockdowns, saw many High Street shops temporarily closing down, which has prompted a massive amount of growth in online shopping, which has benefited the online giants such as Amazon.
The latest retail sales figures for the UK showed that online sales throughout July were over 50% higher than the pre-pandemic levels recorded in February.
Amazon took on thousands of temporary staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that many of them will now be able to move into the new permanent roles that they are offering.
The company is recruiting at more than 50 sites across the UK. It has said that the creation of these new roles, which will include engineers, human resources, IT, graduates, health and safety and finance specialists.
“At the centre of the job creation programme are three new, state-of-the-art fulfilment centres in Darlington, Durham and Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, each fitted out with advanced Amazon Robotics technology and each creating more than 1,000 new permanent roles,” the firm said in a statement.
“Construction of these new fulfilment centres began last year. Darlington started operations in May and the sites in Durham and Sutton-in-Ashfield will launch later this autumn.”
Amazon’s “huge expansion” in the UK “comes as little surprise, given the massive surge in sales the tech giant has experienced, as the e-commerce sector boomed during the pandemic,” said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
“Despite spending billions of dollars gearing itself up to operate through the coronavirus crisis, Amazon still delivered a huge increase in profits during the second quarter.”
“With expansion planned right across the UK, High Street retailers are going to have to deliver some dramatic changes if they’re to compete with the king of e-commerce,” she added.
This comes after the French President, Emmanuel Macron, has defended his citizens’ rights to freedom of speech. The leader’s remarks came as the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of a massacre by terrorists in 2015, announced that it was republishing the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
