Amazon is hiring 20,000 temporary workers in the UK in preparation for the festive season, according to Reuters.

The eCommerce giant has over 50,000 permanent employees in the UK and said the new temporary roles will be placed within its logistics network.

The operations roles will start at a minimum of £10 an hour, rising to £11.10 in some parts of the country.

Amazon is also seeking to find people to help deliver parcels for its Prime arm in their spare time, paying between £13 and £15 an hour.

Warehouses in Britain are currently having to pay up to 30 percent more to recruit staff after the drastic shortage of workers has exacerbated the pressure which is building heavily on the country’s supply chains.

The shortage comes at the same time as a spike in European natural gas prices and the post-Brexit and Covid worker decline which has crippled the country’s fuel supplies.
While the rest of the country is suffering from delivery delays, Amazon has yet to experience any, Reuters reported.

One senior executive at a major British retailer, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said: “I can’t honestly think of a time in the last 20 years when labor-intense UK industries have faced a problem like this.”

They went on to warn that online shoppers could see average delivery times double from around five days to 10, while next-day delivery services could be canceled altogether.