Amazon workers in Bad Hersfeld and Leipzig have walked off the job for two days of strikes. Their union Verdi asserts that the company should treat them as being mail order and retail sector employees, and accept a collective bargaining agreement which would pay them accordingly.

But Amazon insists the staff are logistics workers, which are paid less, and that they are paid above the average to what they are entitled.

The protracted pay dispute has been running for about a year, with semi-regular industrial action. However, some Amazon employees earlier this year distanced themselves from Verdi's demands, saying what the union had said about their working conditions did not reflect reality.

Friday's walkout in the dispatch centers will last until late on Saturday. Amazon has around 9,000 full-time workers in Germany.

jr/hc (AFP, dpa)