How one small town learned to stop worrying and love Amazon

Then, Amazon opened a warehouse here.

The facility, which opened in early 2020, employs 1,300 full-time employees, making it one of the largest employers in the city. It hired 500 additional seasonal workers during the year-end holidays. Wages start at £10 (equivalent to $13.25) an hour above the legal minimum, and benefits include private health care and an education allowance of £8,000 available in installments over four years.

The new jobs have provided an economic boost for the northern England city of 100,000, while fueling the US e-commerce giant’s reappraisal. Gift-shop owner Nicola Reading still blames Amazon for the demise of the local retail landscape, but now also sees an upside.

“It seems that Amazon now employs half the population of Darlington,” she said.

Already the US’s second-largest employer after Walmart Inc., Amazon is moving into Europe and the UK, investing €78 billion ($89 billion) since 2010 in a continental expansion that has accelerated significantly over the past few years. It is done. Amazon employs over 55,000 full-time UK employees.

Amazon executives and government officials say that investment push has softened the e-commerce giant in the places the company has invested.

Long-standing concerns about Amazon dominance in Darlington have not gone away, said Peter Gibson, the city’s representative in parliament. But the city is better off with an Amazon warehouse, he said: “Do I want to see more jobs in Darlington? Yes I do.”

Amazon has been the target of many critics. In late November, UK independent retailers organized a Black Friday protest – shutting down their websites for a day – to raise awareness of the dominance of Amazon and large chain retailers. On the same day, activists blocked warehouses in 13 of Amazon’s 26 UK locations, including one in Darlington, alleging damage to the economy and the environment.

Amazon said it takes its environmental responsibilities seriously and is committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. It emphasized its contribution to the UK economy, saying it had created 10,000 local jobs in 2021 alone. The company said thousands of independent retailers benefit from using its online marketplace to reach audiences across the country.

Nearly half of Amazon’s European investments have been in the UK, which accounts for three-quarters of Amazon’s revenue in Europe, with Germany being its largest market outside the US.

The pandemic has supercharged Amazon’s expansion in Europe, as locked-down consumers go online. Amazon rushed to meet demand with the help of new fulfillment centers and other smaller facilities. The company has opened 11 UK centers over the past three years, including one in Darlington. This is compared to 15 new locations in the past two decades.

Amazon’s 2020 sales grew 51% in the UK from 2019, compared to a 36% increase in the US over the same period. It is now the second largest retailer in the country by sales after grocery chain giant Tesco Plc, according to Edge Retail Insight.

Local officials in Darlington have praised the arrival of Amazon, which they say has benefited the city, mainly by creating jobs. Mark Leidman, assistant director of economic development for Darlington Borough Council, said Amazon’s presence is encouraging young university graduates to stay in the city and attracting other companies.

Home to the world’s first public railroad two centuries ago, Darlington now serves as a logistics and engineering hub for the Northeast of England. Engine manufacturer Cummins Inc. has a factory here since the 1960s. Like many other medium-sized cities across the UK, it developed into a regional destination in the 1980s, where shoppers could find independent stores and a mix of the country’s best-known brands.

“Once upon a time, all roads led to Darlington,” said David Gaskin, a trader at JJ Blair & Sons, a 150-year-old grocery stall in the city’s historic indoor market, set beneath Victorian glass-and-steel There are traditional market stalls. Roof. By the 1990s, Darlington’s rise as a shopping destination was over.

“First we had supermarkets, then there were out-of-town developments,” said Mr. Gaskin, 67, a 30-year veteran of the market. In 2001, Dressers, a beloved local stationer who had begun printing posters and timetables for the railway in the early 1800s, closed along with other family-run stores.

The rise of e-commerce and the financial crisis added to the pressure. The local outlets of Marks & Spencer, a UK high-end grocery chain, and British Home Stores, a national department-store chain, closed.

Ms. Reading, who opened her gift shop, Bliss Gifts, two decades ago, said: “I was suddenly surrounded by a ghost town of empty stores. A third of British stores have disappeared in the past decade, according to the Center for Retail. Research.

Then, Covid-19 arrived, closing some stores temporarily and others permanently; Workers in Darlington found it difficult to find new opportunities.

But Paul Tait, 27, who previously worked at the nearby Cummins plant, found himself a packer at Amazon when it opened in April 2020.

Capable of processing more than 2 million packages a week, the Darlington center is a deafening maze of conveyor belts carrying everything from books and snack foods to toys and electronic gadgets. In fenced-off storage areas, hundreds of orange robots intricately organize mobile shelves filled with items. And between the machinery, teams of human operators like Mr. Tait pick up and pack goods for dispatch.

The GMB union, which represents UK retail workers, has accused Amazon of unsatisfactory working conditions at its British facilities. The union has criticized Amazon’s labor practices that require workers to perform repetitive tasks at exorbitant rates. It also criticized Amazon’s health and safety record, citing serious accidents or near misses at Amazon’s UK facilities between 2016 and 2019.

Responding to the union’s claims, the company said in a statement, “Amazon is a safe place to work. It said critics painted a false picture of its work environment.”

Amazon pays Darlington about £1.2 million a year in local business taxes, on top of workers’ wages and national taxes, according to public statements from the city council. It wouldn’t say where Amazon ranks among the biggest taxpayers in the city.

Darlington Council official Mr Ladyman said the economic burden was creating new problems. The warehouse has made it difficult for other businesses in the area to hire employees. Pubs and restaurants, in particular, are struggling to find workers.

Some, Mr Ladyman said, “can’t compete with Amazon on pay.”