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By Michael Moore
Online retail giant Amazon has said it is planning to hire a thousand new employees in the U.K. as part of a plan to expand its warehouse and distribution staff.
The permanent staff will be based at Amazon’s eight U.K. distribution centers in Doncaster, Dunfermline, Gourock, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Rugeley and Swansea Bay.
They will be the first Amazon employees to benefit from a new working structure at the company, working four-day weeks with longer shifts of 10 hours a day, giving employees a three-day weekend as well as saving them time and money.
Amazon, which announced its first real-world store last week, currently has around 6,000 staff in the U.K., the majority of which are employed at its delivery and customer service operations across the country.
Growing fast
“Over the past two years, we have added well in excess of 2,000 new employees to our workforce, and we are delighted to be able to add a further 1,000 to that number over the coming months,” said Amazon’s U.K. Operations Director John Tagawa.
“We have continued to focus day in, day out on providing the very best shopping experience for our customers, and as we see greater demand, we are able to rapidly grow our talented team across the U.K.”
Last month, Amazon announced plans to open a major new office in London as part of plans to double its U.K. workforce to around 5,000.
The company will be moving employees currently based in Slough to Principal, a £500m site situated between Liverpool Street and Shoreditch High Street stations in the east of the capital. The 15-storey building, currently still under development, is due to be completed in 2016, with Amazon moving in to occupy around two-thirds of the 600,000-square-foot facility in early 2017.
Amazon has also been investing heavily in expanding its operations across the world, including a $2bn investment into India and a major expansion of its presence in China, as it looks to ensure it keeps a leading presence in the world e-commerce market.