UNITED STATES: The world’s largest online retailer announced on Wednesday that the average beginning salary for warehouse and transportation employees at Amazon.com Inc. will climb to more than $19 per hour from $18.
As the busiest time of the year for gift-giving approaches, the salary increase would aid the business in luring and keeping workers in a competitive U.S. labor market.
According to the company, the salary increases will cost the corporation close to $1 billion over the following year. The move by the online retailer comes at the same time as certain employees continue to advocate for the unionization of Amazon sites in the United States. Only one Amazon plant has decided to unionize so far.
The business is struggling with significant employee turnover and surging inflation as workers look for better pay to keep up with increased living expenses.
At the end of the quarter that concluded on June 30, Amazon had approximately 1.5 million full- and part-time employees worldwide, with the majority of them based in the United States.
An improved e-reader that allows users to write on it and a contactless device that can track people’s sleep was among the new gadgets that Amazon unveiled earlier on Wednesday.
Alongside the pay increase, the company said it’s also expanding a payday advance program for its employees that allows them to access up to 70% of their eligible earned pay whenever they choose and without fees, not just on a schedule, such as a biweekly basis.
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