Amazon.com officially opened its new Bay Area fulfillment center in Tracy, Calif., last week. The San Francisco Business Times reported that the "one-million-square-foot facility has more than 400 full-time employees and is still hiring."
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Maintaining that the "best price clauses" Amazon and other Internet companies require from third parties are anti-competitive, Germany's federal cartel office is investigating Amazon and wants the company to change the practice, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.
Andreas Mundt, head of the cartel office, told the paper, "Sometimes it's not so easy for national authorities to prevail against international firms. Luckily we have instruments of torture that we can use if necessary."
This marks another difficulty for the e-tailer in Europe. Amazon has had labor problems in Germany--a union has staged several partial strikes at two Amazon warehouses and threatens to strike during the holiday season--and some politicians in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are calling for changes that would make the company pay more in taxes.