An in-depth look at Amazon's ubiquitous presence in California's Inland Empire, with 16 facilities, as COVID-19 spurs Amazon workers nationwide to organize
Covid-19 has cemented the e-commerce giant's hold on the economy — but it has also spurred employees all around the country to organize.
New York TimesErika Hayasaki
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon's Inland Empire footprint did not appear overnight, but COVID-19 turned it into the company's most concentrated labor geography: sixteen facilities in one Southern California region, staffed by the same essential workforce that has been raising alarms since the pandemic's first weeks. Workers there were already on record — a California warehouse filed complaints with state and county regulators over delayed case notifications and unsafe conditions back in April 2020.
What has changed is scale and coordination. Outbreaks moved from isolated facilities — six warehouses with positive cases by late March 2020, then the biggest single outbreak at a northeastern Pennsylvania warehouse — to a national organizing wave. As coverage of the era noted, the pandemic prematurely delivered a future where whole categories of physical retail closed, which made the warehouse workforce suddenly strategic rather than peripheral.
First-order effects
Amazon now faces organizing pressure simultaneously across dozens of facilities rather than site by site, with the Inland Empire's sixteen-facility cluster giving workers in one labor market shared grievances and shared leverage.
Second-order effects
California state and county regulators, who already received worker complaints about notification delays and conditions, become recurring counterparts for a company whose regional density makes any single facility dispute regionally visible.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, logistics hubs with high facility concentration become the centers of gravity for warehouse labor movements, shifting bargaining power toward regions like the Inland Empire where Amazon's operational dependence is deepest.
The trend: The pandemic is converting essential-service growth at Amazon from a hiring advantage into organized labor pressure centered on its densest regional hubs.
Anyone who buys from @amazon (all of us) needs to read this @nytimes piece on their labor practices - during COVID & beyond: https://www.nytimes.com/... Deep down, we all know how inhumanely Amazon treats their employees. But in order to demand better, we must stare it down 1/
The pandemic cemented Amazon's hold on the economy — but it also spurred employees to organize. Read the @NYTmag cover story on the Great Amazon Awakening https://www.nytimes.com/...
Hey remember how like every movie and show you watched as a kid in the 80s and 90s made fun of public schooling and we destroyed it and now we have Amazon schools https://twitter.com/...
“There's always this pool of people who are one step behind you. So, if you speak up or if you organize, there's a hundred temp workers right outside the door who would be able to take your job.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
one of the under-acknowledged aspects of amazon work is how common it is for employees to be physically in pain at work and how normal it appears, in this instance, for so many people to be at an “in-house Amazon first-aid facility.” https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.co…
America is rightly proud of its separation between church and state. Perhaps we need a separation between corporations and state too? https://twitter.com/...
so excited to be alive at the moment we finally manage to roll progress back to robber barons, company towns, and company schools, really excited for the next innovation when amazon begins paying gig workers in company scrip that can only be used at amazon storefronts https://twi…
For years, Amazon's Inland Empire operations have damaged employees' health and polluted their neighborhoods. COVID-19 made the problems worse, and workers are fighting back. Our local IE partners are documenting these efforts: https://climatesofinequality.org/ ... 1/ https://www…
Brian Freeman, a workers' comp lawyer has represented 78 injured Amazon employees: “They are reaching down for boxes all day. Bending in ways they are not used to & all of a sudden, BAM. They break. Their neck, their back, their arms, something goes out.” https://www.nytimes.com/…
I am struck once again by how Amazon replicates Walmart's path to dominance but as @alexnpress notes, there's no folksy cover story just brute force https://twitter.com/...
All right, fuck it. Hey @amazon: While you're spewing Leadership Principles at public school students, see if you can spot which word in “HIRE and Develop the Best” that you forgot. https://twitter.com/...