Christmas is an extremely busy period for retailers, even more so in countries where the tradition of purchasing gifts happens to be in vogue. Well, we have word that over at Amazon Germany, hundreds of workers have gone on strike right at the moment when pre-Christmas sales start to peak. This strike is the result of a dispute over pay which has been going on for the past few months with no resolution in sight, and a strike at this point in time could lead to a potential delay in the delivery of goods for folks who are expecting items under their Christmas tree when December 25th rolls around.
We do know that Germany is no small fry when it comes to Amazon’s international markets, where sales in that part of the world grew by almost 21% in 2012 to $8.7 billion, which happens to be a third of its overseas total. In fact, Amazon has received the bulk of their daily orders in Germany last year on December 16th, and shipments began to peak the day after that. Amazon Germany has 9,000 warehouse staff and 14,000 seasonal workers under their payroll at nine distribution centers, and considering how the strike involved around 640 workers not turning up for the morning shift would not have adversely affected the delivery times down the road. Phew!
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