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    ‘No Jobs Available’: The Feast or Famine Careers of America’s Port Drivers.

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    Just before 4 o’clock on a Tuesday morning, the sky still black save for the reddish glow of the freeway, Marshawn Jackson rolls over in his bed at his home in Southern California and reaches for his iPhone.He clicks on an app used by truck drivers seeking assignments. The notification he absorbs is both familiar and disheartening: “No jobs available.”Mr. Jackson is paid per delivery. No work means no income. His day is already booked with two assignments, but the rest of his week is dead. Over the next 15 hours, he refreshes the app constantly, desperate to secure more jobs — an exercise in vigorous futility.He refreshes after he pulls his tractor-trailer into a nearby storage yard to pick up an empty shipping container, and again while he rolls down the freeway, toward the Port of Los Angeles — one hand on the wheel, one hand on his phone.He refreshes as he drops off the empty box, and a dozen more times while he waits for a crane to deposit another container on the chassis behind his rig, this one loaded with toys from factories in Asia. He refreshes while he fuels his truck.Each time, the same result.“You reach a point where you’re like, ‘Man, am I even making money?’” Mr. Jackson says. “Is it worth even getting up in the morning?”The sudden disappearance of work is an unexpected turn for Mr. Jackson, 37, and the rest of Southern California’s so-called dray operators — the drivers who transport shipping containers between the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the sprawl of warehouses filling out the Inland Empire to the east.For much of the pandemic, as the worst public health crisis in a century tore at daily life, these drivers were inundated with work, even while they contended with excruciating delays at the ports. Americans sequestered in their homes filled bedrooms with office furniture and basements with exercise equipment, summoning record volumes of goods from factories in Asia. The flow overwhelmed the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the gateway for roughly two-fifths of the nation’s imports.As dozens of ships sat at anchor miles off the coast, awaiting their chance to unload, dray operators like Mr. Jackson idled for hours on land before they could enter port gates. They waited hours more to pick up their containers, and yet again before they could drop them off at warehouses.These days, the lines are mostly gone, and loading and unloading goes smoothly. But the same truck drivers who endured the worst of the Great Supply Chain Disruption are now suffering another affliction as the docks reverts to a semblance of normalcy. The frenzied chaos that dominated the first years of the pandemic has been replaced by an uneasy stillness — not enough work.Like many truck drivers, Mr. Jackson works long hours.Brandon Pavan for The New York TimesHe checks his phone many times during the day to try to secure more jobs for his two employees and himself.Brandon Pavan for The New York TimesIncoming shipments are diminishing at Southern California’s two largest ports. This is partly because American demand for kitchen appliances, video game consoles and lawn furniture is finally waning. It also reflects how major retailers are bypassing Southern California, instead shipping to East Coast destinations like Savannah, Ga., to avoid potential upheaval as West Coast dockworkers face off with port managers over a new contract.Mr. Jackson’s journey through a maze of traffic-choked freeways exemplifies the bewildering, often-perilous road confronting tens of millions of workers in a global economy still grappling with the volatile effects of the pandemic along with soaring inflation.As central banks raise interest rates to choke off demand for goods and services in an effort to lower consumer prices, they are reducing income for legions of workers who are paid per assignment. The situation is especially fraught for the nation’s 75,000 dray operators and other foot soldiers of the supply chain.Dockworkers, who wield equipment to load and unload containers at ports, are protected by fierce and disciplined unions that have succeeded in commanding some of the higher wages in blue collar American life. Dray operators work primarily as independent contractors, buying their own fuel and insurance.Their status leaves them subject to constant shifts in economic fortune. In good times, like last year, dray operators command whatever the market must pay to keep them rolling. In lean times, they are guaranteed nothing.As he navigates five lanes of traffic on the way to the port, Mr. Jackson dons headphones to conduct a series of phone calls.More on CaliforniaBullet Train to Nowhere: Construction of the California high-speed rail system, America’s most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare.A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights — a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California — endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire.Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In California’s Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action.He talks to his wife, sharing worries that they might not be able to close on their purchase of a newly built home. His income has fluctuated wildly in recent months. The mortgage company is demanding more documents, filling him with dread.He speaks with two men who drive a pair of trucks that he owns. He coordinates their schedules and helps them navigate unfamiliar shipping terminals. He frets that they may not bring in enough to cover the expenses on his other rigs.He passes billboards for beachfront homes in Baja, flights to Las Vegas, spa resorts. He wonders when he will be able to take his wife and 13-year-old daughter on a vacation.He contemplates the tenuous nature of American upward mobility, the forces tearing at the life he has constructed.“The way we’re living is hard times right now,” Mr. Jackson says. “You’ve still got to smile through it. You’ve still got to be positive. But, man, I’m dealing with a lot right now.”Container ships waited to enter the Port of Los Angeles during a large backlog last year.Erin Schaff/The New York Times‘Pray you can make it out.’Raised in South Central Los Angeles, Mr. Jackson says he embraced trucking as a form of liberation from a community he described as chronically short of good jobs and bedeviled by gang violence.“You get used to seeing things,” he says. “All you can do is pray you can make it out.”Growing up, he helped his grandmother with a hair care products business, packing boxes in a warehouse when he was only 10. But when the company failed in the aftermath of the long recession that began in 2007, Mr. Jackson sought a reliable way to support his partner and their then-infant daughter.A friend told him there were good jobs in long-haul trucking. He signed up for a training program arranged by Swift, a giant in the industry.He hopped the Greyhound to Phoenix for the three-week program, sharing a motel room full of scorpions with two other trainees. They practiced on aging rigs that lacked air conditioning despite summer heat reaching 117 degrees.He was soon earning $1,000 a week hauling trailers from a Dollar Store distribution center in Southern California to Phoenix and back.But as the routes grew longer, the strains on his family life intensified. He was hauling refrigerated trailers full of lettuce from the fields of central California to a distribution center in North Carolina. He was routinely away for two and three weeks at a stretch.When his daughter graduated from kindergarten in 2016, he pleaded with the company to schedule him to be home, just for that day. One dispatcher — a gruff, former Marine — mocked him.“This is what you signed up for,” he said.Mr. Jackson did not make it to the ceremony.“I felt like I was letting my whole family down,” he says. “It changed my whole outlook.”He drove back to California and turned in the keys on the truck he leased from the company. He used savings to buy a used rig and began picking up routes as an independent contractor, limiting his time away to no more than three days.Then he figured out how to sleep at home every night. He began working in and out of the port.He eventually bought the other trucks and took on the pair of drivers, paying them a share of the proceeds on the loads they deliver.“It was one of those things where you’ve got to take a risk,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I bet it all on myself? It was something I knew I could do.”He and his family moved into a rented apartment in the Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, and then into a modest house they bought just off the freeway. They vacationed in Mexico and Hawaii.His daughter’s name, Bailey Jackson, is painted in white letters on the door of his rig. She is the reason he keeps rolling, he says. He takes her shopping — for clothes, for books.“That girl is always reading,” he says. “Some days, she’ll finish more than one book.”This year, he signed off on buying a four-bedroom home with space for a swimming pool in a quiet community carved into the desert in Riverside County.It was a five-minute drive from the yard where he parks his truck.It was a lifetime away from South Central Los Angeles.Dray operators like Mr. Jackson have to idle for hours on land before they can enter port gates.Brandon Pavan for The New York Times’We’ve got to survive.’Though the Inland Empire lies roughly 60 miles from the ports, its clusters of warehouses are an extension of the docks.Here, major retailers stash the bounty delivered from Asia via container ships. Distribution centers supply consumers across much of the American West.In the same way that massive slaughterhouses turned Chicago into a rail hub in the late 19th century, the Inland Empire has burgeoned into a dominant center of warehousing in the age of big box retail and e-commerce.At 5:43 a.m., the sun still a vague suggestion to the east, Mr. Jackson sits behind the wheel of his enormous blue Kenworth tractor. He guides it into a Shell station and climbs down to the pavement.Diesel is selling for $6.19 a gallon, an eye-popping number. He puts $100 in the tank, enough to get to Los Angeles to drop off the empty trailer he has picked up this morning from a warehouse for a home appliance company.Fifteen minutes later, as the sun glimmers through hazy skies, he is headed west on I-60.He wonders what the day will bring.A year ago, he could take his pick from scores of jobs at the Dray Alliance, the online platform where he secures assignments. Not anymore. Whenever a new job appears, he clicks immediately, knowing that dozens of other drivers are also keeping vigil on the site.The uncertainties of the trade are wearying. Three times in the past week, Mr. Jackson has wound up on so-called dry runs — journeys aborted because of a glitch. Sometimes, the paperwork is not in order. Other times, a pickup appointment has been made incorrectly. He heads home with a $100 fee from the shipper. It barely covers the cost of gas.Last year, when dozens of container ships were waiting their turns to unload, he sometimes sat parked in lines for as long as five hours to pick up and drop off, even as the Dray Alliance’s app steered him to jobs with the least congestion. He would grab his neck pillow and pass out in the front seat.Now, no app can redress a basic reduction in demand. Not only are jobs scarce, but compensation has fallen.Less than a year ago, Mr. Jackson was earning about $700 to haul a container from San Bernardino to the port of Los Angeles, a 70-mile journey that can take more than two hours when traffic is bad. This morning’s job brings $500, even though the price of fuel has increased.Trucks waiting to enter a terminal at the Port of Los Angeles in June.Stella Kalinina for The New York TimesStill, every job draws fierce interest, because drivers are stuck with bills.“They know we’ve got to keep working,” Mr. Jackson says. “That’s how they take advantage. We’ve got to survive.”At 7:20, a vivid sun gathering force, Mr. Jackson pulls into the container storage yard near the port, rumbling over bumpy pavement. He backs into a space between two other containers, steps out of the cab, and turns a crank handle to lower the landing gear on the chassis. Then he detaches the box.He quickly finds the empty container he is picking up. But he notices that the chassis below it is painted pale yellow — an indication that it is old. This could trigger an inspection.He drives to port, entering the gates of APM Terminals at 7:40. The terminal is controlled by Maersk, a Danish company that is one of the two largest container shipping operations on earth.The security guard waves him through. A few minutes later, a dockworker driving a top loader — a machine that lifts containers — motions for Mr. Jackson to pull up to an appointed space so he can pluck the box off the rig and add it to a stack.Mr. Jackson scans the app on his phone for his next destination: space E162, the letters painted white on the dock. He pulls in tight, his passenger-side mirror grazing the container to his right. A crane lifts a box off the stacks and deposits it onto his chassis. It lands with a thunderous boom.The morning is proceeding so smoothly that Mr. Jackson indulges visions of dropping the container, at a Mattel warehouse, with time enough to spare for a proper meal — his first of the day — before heading back to the port.But then a dockworker notices the old chassis. He diverts him to a special maintenance area. There, Mr. Jackson sits for more than an hour while a mechanic administers a repair.He pulls in to a truck stop in Long Beach, and adds another $400 worth of diesel to his tank.He walks across the lot, stepping between other tractor-trailers, on his way to the restroom — his first pit stop since dawn.One of his drivers calls to report that he has accepted an assignment from Dray Alliance to drop off an empty container at the port, and is now headed back to the Inland Empire, pulling nothing.Mr. Jackson is distressed. He had arranged for the driver to pick up a load at the port this evening. He should have waited to do both jobs on a single journey. Instead, he is burning gas on two round trips — at Mr. Jackson’s expense.“How does that cover the cost of me paying you?” Mr. Jackson asks. “The rates are down. It’s slow, bro’.”Mr. Jackson is an independent contractor who owns his truck and two others.Brandon Pavan for The New York Times‘I’m taking care of business.’At 11 in the morning, he is on the freeway again, headed back to the Inland Empire to drop off the container. He shovels a handful of popcorn into his mouth. Then he puts the bag on his console, and picks up his iPhone to refresh. No jobs.Fat clouds hang low over the Arrowhead Mountains as Mr. Jackson arrives at the Mattel warehouse just after noon. He drops the container, picks up an empty, and returns to the freeway, headed back to the port for the second half of his long day.Many truck drivers obsessively consume caffeine, perpetually fearful that they might otherwise descend into a dangerous state known as highway hypnosis.Mr. Jackson abstains. “I drink a lot of this,” he says, taking a swig from a bottle of Fiji water.To stay alert, he relies on the vibrations of his $6,000 sound system. He cranks up the dial on an old Isley Brothers classic, “Work to Do.” “I’m taking care of business, woman can’t you see. I’ve gotta make it for you, and gotta make it for me.”He rolls past a billboard for Fastevict.com, past tent cities full of homeless people, past self-storage units.He makes it to the port in time for a meal before his 3 p.m. pickup.He winds through the cracked streets of Long Beach, looking for a curb long enough to park a tractor-trailer. He finds a spot around the corner from the truck stop. He waits for an Uber Eats driver, who arrives bearing a Chipotle bowl — brown rice, chicken and avocado.He drops the container, picks up another, and parks again in Long Beach, taking a nap in the back in the cab while waiting for rush hour traffic to ease.At 6:30 in the evening, twilight settling over the parched land, he rolls toward home while again on the phone with his wife.The mortgage underwriter does not understand the division between Mr. Jackson’s personal finances and his business — a blurry line. The closing appears in danger. (He will eventually pull it off, though that will leave him staring at mortgage payments with diminished income.)Darkness fills his cab. Brake lights flicker ahead. He and his wife struggle to understand where their road leads.“People are like, ‘If you get through this point, you’ll be OK,’” Mr. Jackson says. “And I’m like, ‘How long is this point going to last?’”Major retailers are bypassing Southern California, instead shipping to East Coast destinations like Savannah, Ga., shown here, to avoid potential upheaval.Erin Schaff/The New York Times More

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    Amazon Labor Union Loses Election at Warehouse Near Albany

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    By a 2-to-1 ratio, the group had its second defeat since a surprise victory in April on Staten Island.Workers at an Amazon facility near Albany, N.Y., have voted decisively against being represented by the upstart Amazon Labor Union, denting efforts to expand unionization across the giant e-commerce company.Employees at the warehouse cast 206 votes to be represented by the union and 406 against, according to a count released on Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board. Almost 950 workers were eligible to vote.The vote was the Amazon Labor Union’s second unsuccessful election since a surprise victory in April, when workers at an Amazon facility on Staten Island voted to form the first union of the company’s warehouse employees in the United States.“We’re glad that our team in Albany was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep the direct relationship with Amazon,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement.In recent months, the Amazon Labor Union has debated whether to focus on winning a contract at the Staten Island facility, known as JFK8, or on expanding its reach to other warehouses around the country through additional elections.Christian Smalls, the union’s president, “is very much in favor of trying to create opportunities for as many workers as possible to vote,” said Cassio Mendoza, a JFK8 worker and the union’s communications director. At the same time, the union has felt pressure to demonstrate progress to workers on Staten Island, and has recently stepped up its internal organizing there after months of minimal public activity.The result on Tuesday from the ALB1 warehouse in Castleton-on-Hudson, N.Y., about 10 miles south of Albany, did not appear to dissuade the union from reaching beyond JFK8.More on Big TechIn Australia: Dozens of workers at Apple walked off the job after negotiations over pay and working conditions stalled. This is why the action is significant.Inside Meta’s Struggles: After a rocky year, employees at Meta are expressing skepticism, confusion and frustration over Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse.A Deal for Twitter?: In a surprise move, Elon Musk has offered to acquire Twitter at his original price of $44 billion, which could bring to an end the acrimonious legal fight between the billionaire and the company.Hiring Freezes: Amazon is halting corporate hiring in its retail business for the rest of the year, joining Meta as the latest tech companies to pull back amid the economic uncertainty.“We are filled with resolve to continue and expand our campaign for fair treatment for all Amazon workers,” Mr. Smalls said in a statement. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”About 80 percent of the union’s budget of more than half a million dollars has been focused on Staten Island, union officials have said. The rest has been set aside for expansion efforts, including at ALB1 and a facility in Southern California that submitted a petition for an election last week.Mr. Smalls said the election “wasn’t free and fair.” Even before the ballots were tallied on Tuesday, the union expressed concern that Amazon had improperly interfered with the vote, potentially laying the groundwork for a legal objection to the result.Labor board staff members have been investigating 27 charges of unfair labor practices that the union filed against Amazon before the voting began, the agency said last week. The union has since lodged additional concerns.One included an accusation that a worker had been suspended for complaining that one of Amazon’s anti-union consultants followed him around and harassed him during the voting period, according to Retu Singla, a lawyer representing the union.“They try to whip votes during the election,” said Mr. Mendoza, who added that the consultant appeared to be wearing worker clothes and an Amazon vest.Another employee, who was not directly involved with the union campaign and requested anonymity, said on the first day of voting that he had seen what appeared to be “fake employees” who were wearing Amazon vests but did not know the basics of the jobs and cast doubt on the union’s ability to negotiate a contract.Matthew Bodie, a former N.L.R.B. lawyer now at the University of Minnesota Law School, said that while one-on-one conversations with workers during the voting period were allowed, seeking to deceive employees by misrepresenting the identity of company agents could amount to interference in the election.Amazon declined to comment on the accusations.The ALB1 warehouse handles oversize items like outdoor equipment and televisions. A recent report by a worker advocacy group found that the facility had the highest rate of serious injuries of any Amazon warehouse in New York for which the group was able to obtain government data.Amazon has emphasized its minimum starting wage and benefits, and has said it has improved its safety record more than other retailers in recent years. In its messaging to workers, it has questioned the Amazon Labor Union’s experience and has said workers could be worse off if they voted for a union.In interviews outside the warehouse in September, some Amazon workers said they were supporting the union because pay was too low, especially in light of how physically taxing the work could be. The company recently raised its starting base wage at the warehouse to $17 an hour, from $15.70.“I think we need a union — we need more pay,” said Masud Abdullah, an employee at the warehouse. He said he had made about $22 an hour at an industrial bakery, but left that job because the hours did not fit with his parenting responsibilities.He and other workers also said they felt Amazon’s disciplinary policies were sometimes arbitrary. “It’s like you don’t have nobody representing you,” Mr. Abdullah said. “They could get you in and out for anything.”Other workers said they didn’t believe a union was necessary because Amazon already provided solid pay and benefits, such as health care and college tuition subsidies. Even some union supporters acknowledged that the company often treated workers well.Some workers expressed skepticism that the Amazon Labor Union would deliver on its promises, such as improving pay. “I feel like I haven’t seen any evidence,” said Jacob Carpenter, who works at the warehouse. He added that he planned to vote no.Amazon has been fighting the union’s successful vote on Staten Island. After a lengthy hearing on the company’s objections to that election, a labor board official recently endorsed the union’s victory. A regional official must still weigh in, but Amazon told workers at JFK8 that it intended to appeal. The union has recently pushed a petition to pressure Amazon to negotiate a contract. More

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    Reno Is Booming. Some Workers Feel Left Behind.

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    Companies are flocking to the Nevada city, but the rising cost of housing, gas and groceries is making daily life a struggle for many who work there.As an employee at a UPS warehouse outside Reno, Nev., Christina Pixton spends her nights moving thousands of heavy packages on their way to far-flung locales like San Francisco, Phoenix and Chicago.But the warehouse is not air-conditioned, and one night last month, there was no relief outside, either, with smoke from a California wildfire more than 100 miles away causing hazardous air quality. For Ms. Pixton, who has asthma, the irritation to her lungs was the latest challenge she had to learn to navigate in Reno.These are boom times in and around Reno. Warehousing and casinos have long been the city’s main businesses, and the surge in e-commerce since the start of the pandemic has companies snapping up facilities as fast as they can be built.Yet Reno and the surrounding area have also seen the cost of things like housing, gas and groceries rise, making daily existence in this growing metropolis increasingly difficult for many of the people who live here, like Ms. Pixton.Christina Pixton, a UPS worker, and her husband make six figures combined, but struggle with the daily costs of living. While gas prices have fallen to an average of $3.91 a gallon across the United States and $5.34 in Nevada, the average in Reno is $5.75, according to data from AAA. It costs Ms. Pixton $70 to $80 a week to fill up her Toyota Highlander, she said.In the past five years, home prices in the area have risen 70 percent, according to Zillow. That’s good news for homeowners like Ms. Pixton. The typical home in Reno is worth $568,103, up 10.2 percent over the past year. But average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Reno has increased 10 percent compared with last year and 40 percent from three years ago, according to data from Zumper, which tracks housing data.And while homes and planned communities are being developed where farmland once was, affordable housing has become a much-discussed issue among residents and policymakers. Reno’s City Council approved additional affordable housing projects in March. In neighboring Sparks, Mayor Ed Lawson has pushed for denser development — building up and not just out — and more development on federal lands.Housing developments are popping up all over Reno and the surrounding area.Other changes are affecting the way of life in Reno. By the time Ms. Pixton, 37, wants to go shopping after her shift ends around 11 p.m., stores that were once open are now closed after scaling back their hours during the pandemic. When she does make it to Walmart or Target, she often finds scant offerings on the shelves because of continuing supply chain issues and the fact that the Walmart, one of the few locations for miles, draws people from neighboring cities.In a city whose economy is partly driven by getting goods to people across the country expeditiously, Ms. Pixton is left scrambling to find Uncrustables frozen sandwiches for her two sons and the right brand of dog food for the family’s Labrador retriever.“This isn’t a sustainable pattern,” said Ms. Pixton, whose husband works as a foreman at an HVAC company. “We make six figures, and we’re still stuck in this struggling pattern.”In May 2021, Ms. Pixton received a raise to $19 an hour, up from $16. It was a market-rate adjustment that UPS put in place across the country to stay competitive when hiring and retaining workers.But in January, it went back down to $16. As a union steward, Ms. Pixton found herself telling other workers the bad news. Fifteen people quit that week, she said.“It’s been quite hellish,” Ms. Pixton said. “It was not a completely livable salary, but it was something where we could struggle and not have to get a second job.”A spokesman for UPS said that, starting on Oct. 2, another market-rate adjustment brought hourly pay for part-time workers back to $19 an hour.The area offers plenty of affordable land for warehouses, along with access to an interstate and an international airport.In recent years, e-commerce companies have flooded the market. The Reno-Sparks area, with a population of about half a million, ticks a lot of boxes for companies seeking to expand back-end operations. There’s no state income tax, cheap land is available, there’s access to a main interstate and an international airport, and it’s close to California, whose huge economy and millions of people are significant draws for consumer companies looking to easily connect with their customers.In 2014, when Elon Musk came to Nevada to celebrate the opening of Tesla’s giant Gigafactory warehouse, meant to build batteries for his company’s electric vehicles, he encouraged other executives to follow.“What the people of Nevada have created is a state where you can be very agile, where you can do things quickly and get things done,” Mr. Musk said at the time, standing among the state’s legislators.And follow they did. Chewy, Amazon, Thrive Market and Apple have opened or expanded warehouses in the area over the past decade. Third-party logistics companies like OnTrac and Stord have also propped up new facilities in town.Reno’s highways and back roads are dotted with “Now Hiring” billboards.Reno has just a 0.5 percent vacancy rate for warehouses, according to data from the real estate service firm CBRE. About 8.8 million square feet is under construction in the Reno-Sparks area, according to CBRE, and about 80 percent of it is already leased.“We were a good market on a great trajectory averaging four million square feet, probably going to five,” said Eric Bennett, senior vice president of CBRE, which helps lease space to companies. “The pandemic obviously increased the absorption.”Some of these companies have set up their own distribution channels to get their products where they need to go. Others use UPS. All of them need hundreds of people to complete the strenuous work of moving their goods through the facilities and getting them to consumers.“Now Hiring” billboards dot Reno’s interstate and back roads. A chocolate factory was willing to pay as much as $25 an hour. A sign outside a Petco warehouse says a starting salary could be as high as $22 an hour. Hidden Valley Ranch’s plant says its starting hourly wage is $21, with other benefits including a 401(k), paid time off, and health care with dental and vision. Many retailers like Walmart are also trying to attract seasonal workers.Those opportunities are siphoning off potential UPS workers and creating more manual labor for those who remain, said Ross Kinson, a business agent for the local Teamsters.Ross Kinson, a business agent for the local Teamsters, said the increased competition for workers had left some UPS shifts short staffed.Workers like Ms. Pixton.Like many in Reno, she is a California transplant. She moved from Chico with her now-husband, John, in 2008, when Reno was reeling from the housing crisis. Casinos filed for bankruptcy. New construction ground to a halt. She worked in the medical and fast food industries before turning to warehouses.She started at UPS in 2018, attracted by the health care benefits and pension package, and initially made about $13 an hour. She works part time, usually 28 to 32 hours per week. Even though other companies have offered higher wages, she has stayed at UPS because the health benefits cover her children and her pension will vest in about a year.Ms. Pixton has stayed with UPS because of the health care benefits that cover her sons.When the pandemic hit, she felt the impact of millions of stuck-at-home shoppers buying all kinds of merchandise. Before Covid, about 70,000 packages would flow through her hub on a normal summer evening. During the pandemic summer of 2020, that number rose as high as 240,000, though it’s now around 115,000 to 140,000 packages a night.“We’re handling the most amount of packages of any shift because we are getting all of the inbound local businesses. We’re getting the transfers from Sacramento and Oakland and Salt Lake City,” she said. “We’ll get all inbound stuff from other states and have our outbound stuff as well.”Six people are considered a skeleton crew in her department, but Ms. Pixton said that often only three or four were working.As the holiday season approaches, UPS says it plans to hire about 100,000 workers, and is speeding up the process by eliminating interviews and allowing candidates to apply online. At the hub where Ms. Pixton works, UPS is looking to add 400 workers.UPS plans to add seasonal workers for the holidays and has been advertising on online job boards.The current contract that UPS has with the Teamsters went into place in 2018 and expires in 2023. Mr. Kinson said the union would push to formalize language regarding the market-rate wage adjustment for part-time workers for the next contract.“We’d negotiate on good faith,” a UPS spokesman, Glenn Zaccara, said. “The wages they are receiving is industry-leading.”Reno is known for its casinos, but warehouses have long been an economic engine as well.But in a city like Reno that has seen rapid growth, workers argue that the terms of the contract haven’t kept up with reality.“In this area it’s got to be $19 an hour,” Mr. Kinson said. “It has to be or it won’t work.”Loni Goddard works at Kerala Ayurveda, a wellness company, and rents an apartment in Reno. In 2020, her one-bedroom apartment cost $950 with internet and cable. When she re-signed her lease in April, the rent rose to $1,490 — not including internet and cable.“During the pandemic, everyone was getting temporary raises in Reno,” Ms. Goddard said. “At the beginning of 2022, most or all of the raises disappeared and so did the people.”At her UPS job, Ms. Pixton is bracing for the holiday rush. But, she noted, every day has essentially become peak season, considering how much work there is and how few people there are to do it. And while she wishes that more people would join UPS to alleviate some of her workload, she understands why some look elsewhere for employment.“If you’re making less than what you’re paying in gas,” she said, “what’s the point of going?” More

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    As Warehouses Multiply, Some California Cities Say: Enough

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    From the front yard of her ranch-style home, Pam Lemos peered out on the vast valley of her childhood.She can still picture the way it looked back in the 1980s — citrus groves blanketing hillsides, dairy farms stretching for acres and horses grazing under a bright blue sky. These days, when she looks toward the horizon, she mainly sees the metal roofs of hulking warehouses.“Now it’s all industrial,” said Ms. Lemos, 55, who has lived in Colton, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, her entire life. “We are working to change that and starting with these warehouses.”Ms. Lemos is part of a growing coalition of residents and leaders in Colton and neighboring cities — a logistical hub for the nation — who are increasingly frustrated with the proliferation of warehouses in the region, as well as the side effects of the rapid expansion.As warehouse construction has ballooned nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. Neighborhood apps like Nextdoor and Facebook groups have been flooded with complaints over construction. In California, the anger has turned to widespread action.Several cities in this slice of Southern California, known as the Inland Empire, have passed ordinances in recent months halting new warehouse projects so officials can study the effects of pollution and congestion on residents like Ms. Lemos. Similar local moratoriums have cropped up in New York and New Jersey in recent years, but on a much smaller scale.Labor groups and business coalitions have entered the fray, warning that the new ordinances — along with a push in the state Legislature to widen the restrictions — will cost the region tax revenue and needed jobs and could further disrupt a shaky national supply chain.The Inland Empire, where the population has quadrupled to 4.6 million in the last 50 years as people were priced out of places closer to Los Angeles, is a critical storage-and-sorting point because of its proximity to rail lines that are a short jaunt from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, global hubs that handle 40 percent of the nation’s seaborne imports.In the early 1990s, there were about 650 warehouses in the region, according to a data tool from Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. By last year, there were nearly 4,000.Pam Lemos has lived in Colton her entire life. “Now it’s all industrial,” she said. “We are working to change that.”Amazon is a major presence, with more than a dozen warehouses in the Inland Empire. Although it is slowing its warehouse expansion nationally and has closed or mothballed some buildings, it is constructing a five-story, four-million-square-foot facility in the city of Ontario. The warehouse, which is scheduled to be completed in 2024 and expected to be one of the company’s largest in the nation, will provide jobs for roughly 1,500 people.Susan Phillips, a professor of environmental analysis at Pitzer who has studied the growth of warehouses in the Inland Empire, says the only way to regulate construction is through the municipal planning process.“Warehouse growth is totally demand-driven,” Ms. Phillips said. “Developers and many municipalities do not want any regulation on this, and at this point warehouses are growing at many times the rate of population growth.”Since 2020, elected officials in a half-dozen Inland Empire cities, including Riverside, its most populous, have imposed moratoriums on warehouse construction. The timeouts are meant to assess, among other things, the effects of pollution, the appropriate distances between homes and warehouses, and the impact of heavy truck traffic on streets.Tucked in the shadow of the San Bernardino Mountains, Colton has long been known as “Hub City” because it is a crossing of two railroads — BNSF and Union Pacific — that shuttle cargo to and from the ports. Today, the city of 54,000 is home to 58 licensed warehouses.Isaac Suchil, a councilman in Colton, was a sponsor of his city’s moratorium, which was recently extended through May 2023. While he stresses that he is not “anti-warehouse,” Mr. Suchil said he would like to see buffer zones requiring that new facilities be at least 300 feet from schools and residential areas. The current requirements vary and are applied differently from project to project, he said.“The moratorium gives us time to address future projects,” he said.Residents have grown increasingly frustrated with the proliferation of warehouses in the region.Isaac Suchil, a councilman in Colton and a sponsor of the city’s moratorium on warehouses.Colton, a city of 54,000, is home to 58 licensed warehouses.Assemblywoman Eloise Gómez Reyes, who represents several Inland Empire cities, including Colton, has taken the fight to Sacramento, the state capital. She sponsored a bill this year that would require new logistics projects in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties that are 100,000 square feet or larger to be at least 1,000 feet from homes, schools and health care centers.“The warehouses bring with them trucks producing diesel particulate matter,” Ms. Gómez Reyes said, noting an American Lung Association report this year that found that those counties were among the worst for annual particulate pollution.Ms. Gómez Reyes, who withdrew her bill from consideration after struggling to find votes, even among fellow Democrats who dominate the Legislature, said she planned to reintroduce the measure next year.The efforts to suspend and regulate warehouse construction have faced staunch opposition from groups including the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which represents construction workers in the United States, and the California Chamber of Commerce.Jennifer Barrera, chief executive of the California Chamber of Commerce, said a measure like the one put forth by Ms. Gómez Reyes would hurt job growth and apply a one-size-fits-all approach that would strip local jurisdictions of necessary freedom around land-use decisions.In the first half of 2022, there were roughly 135,400 warehouse jobs in the Inland Empire, according to the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, a group that works with business and government leaders. In 2010, there were roughly 19,900 warehouse jobs in the region.“A warehouse ban would only exacerbate the goods movement and logistics backlogs California consumers are facing,” Ms. Barrera said. “With more people ordering goods online and wanting quick delivery, the need for storage space is growing.”But some local residents are tired of feeling that their region is losing out on more than it is gaining.This summer, a deal was reached to relocate an elementary school in Bloomington, Calif., to make space for a warehouse, and earlier this year, the City Council in Ontario approved the construction of a warehouse on the site of an area that was once home to a dairy farm. In both instances, residents voiced their frustration on social media and at public meetings.“For too long it’s been build, build, build, with no repercussions,” said Alicia Aguayo, a member of the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a group that has pushed for some of the moratoriums.Ms. Aguayo, a lifelong resident of the Inland Empire, says that in recent years she has met more and more people in her community who have asthma and cancer. She would like to see more resources dedicated to studying the health impacts of pollution in the region.“It’s environmental racism and hitting mostly Latino communities,” Ms. Aguayo said.Last year, Southern California officials adopted rules for warehouses that aim to cut truck pollution and reduce health risks.Morris Donald has witnessed the warehouse boom from his backyard in San Bernardino, Calif.The regulations from the South Coast Air Quality Management District require large warehouses to curb or offset emissions from their operations or pay fees that go toward air-quality improvements.In San Bernardino, where a proposed effort last year fell one council vote shy of establishing a 45-day moratorium on the construction of new warehouses, Morris Donald has witnessed the warehouse boom from his backyard.For 11 years, he has rented a three-bedroom home in a neighborhood now surrounded by four warehouses. In recent years, he said, most of the neighbors he knew have moved away and several landlords have sold to developers.“It’s taken away the neighborhood feel,” Mr. Donald said. “Kids don’t play outside. No one is in their yards.”But he sees the benefits as well — he works as a forklift mechanic at a Quiksilver warehouse, his wife is a manager at another and his son works as a security guard at a third facility.“If you want jobs,” Mr. Donald said, “they’re out here in the warehouses, and that’s a fact.”In Colton, Ms. Lemos spends some of her free time volunteering for groups that work closely with the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice. The moratorium, she said, could not have come soon enough.“How did this get so out of control?” Ms. Lemos said, noting that in the months before the moratorium was enacted, the city approved a pair of warehouses with a combined square footage of 1.8 million.On a recent afternoon, Ms. Lemos twisted her Jeep Wrangler along a winding two-lane road, which was pockmarked with potholes left behind, she said, from the semi trucks that shuttle goods from warehouses. The air was thick, and a line of smog hovered along the horizon. A horn from an incoming train pierced the air.“There is always something going on here — trucks, trains, construction from warehouses,” she said. “It’s like we’re living in this logistical bubble while trying to raise our families.” More

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    As Inventory Piles Up, Liquidation Warehouses Are Busy

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    PITTSTON, Pa. — Once upon a time, when parents were scrambling to occupy their children during pandemic lockdowns, bicycles were hard to find. But today, in a giant warehouse in northeastern Pennsylvania, there are shiny new Huffys and Schwinns available at big discounts.The same goes for patio furniture, garden hoses and portable pizza ovens. There are home spas, Rachael Ray’s nonstick pans and a backyard firepit, which promises to make “memories every day.”The warehouse is run by Liquidity Services, a company that collects surplus and returned goods from major retailers like Target and Amazon and resells them, often for cents on the dollar. The facility opened last November and is operating at exceptionally high volumes for this time of year.The warehouse offers a window into a reckoning across the retail industry and the broader economy: After a two-year binge of consumer spending — fueled by government checks and the ease of e-commerce — a nasty hangover is taking hold.The warehouse is nearly the size of two football fields.With consumers cutting down on discretionary purchases because of high inflation, retailers are now stuck with more inventory than they need. While overall spending rebounded last month, some major retailers say shoppers are buying less clothing, gardening equipment and electronics and focusing instead on basics like food and gas.Adding to that glut are all the things people bought during the pandemic — often online — and then returned. In 2021, shoppers returned an average of 16.6 percent of their purchases, up from 10.6 percent in 2020 and more than double the rate in 2019, according to an analysis by the National Retail Federation, a trade group, and Appriss Retail, a software and analytics firm.Last year’s returns, which retailers are not always able to resell themselves, totaled $761 billion in lost sales. That, the retail federation noted, is more than the annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense.It’s becoming clear that retailers badly misjudged supply and demand. Part of their miscalculation was caused by supply chain delays, which prompted companies to secure products far in advance. Then, there is the natural cycle of booms — whether because of optimism or greed, companies rarely pull back before it’s too late.“It is surprising to me on some level that we saw all that surge of buying activity and we weren’t collectively able to see that it was going to end at some point,” J.D. Daunt, chief commercial officer at Liquidity Services, said in an interview at the Pennsylvania warehouse earlier this month.“You would think that there would be enough data and enough history to see that a little more clearly,” he added. “But it also suggests that times are changing and they are changing fast and more dramatically.”Strong consumer spending may have saved the economy from ruin during the pandemic, but it has also led to enormous excess and waste.Retailers have begun to slash prices on inventory in their stores and online. Last Monday, Walmart issued the industry’s latest warning when it said that its operating profits would drop sharply this year as it cut prices on an oversupply of general merchandise.The warehouse opened in November and is operating at exceptionally high volumes.Adding to the glut are the things people bought during the pandemic and then returned.Many companies cannot afford to let discounted items ‌linger on their shelves because they have to make room for new seasonal goods and the necessities that consumers now prefer. While some retailers are discounting the surplus within their stores, many would rather avoid holding big sales themselves for fear of hurting their brands by conditioning buyers to expect big price cuts as the norm. So retailers look to liquidators to do that dirty work.Additionally, industry executives say the glut is so large that some retailers could run out of space to house it all.“It’s unprecedented,” said Chuck Johnston, a former Walmart executive, who is now chief strategy officer at goTRG, a firm which helps retailers manage returns. “I have never seen the pressure in terms of excess inventory as I am seeing right now.”So, much of the industry’s flotsam and jetsam washes up in warehouses like this one, located off Interstate 81, a few exits from the President Biden Expressway in Scranton, the president’s hometown.The giant facility is part of an industrial park that was built above a reclaimed strip mine dating back to when this region was a major coal producer. Today, the local economy is home to dozens of e-commerce warehouses that cover the hilly landscape like giant spaceships, funneling goods to the population centers in and around New York and Philadelphia.Liquidity Services, a publicly traded company founded in 1999, decided to open its new facility as close as it could to the Scranton area’s major e-commerce warehouses, making it easy for retailers to dispense with their unwanted and returned items.Even before the inventory glut appeared this spring, returns had been a major problem for retailers. The huge surge in e-commerce sales during the pandemic — increasing more than 40 percent in 2020 from the previous year — has only added to it.The National Retail Federation and Appriss Retail calculate that more than 10 percent of returns last year involved fraud, including people wearing clothing and then sending it back or stealing goods from stores and returning them with fake receipts. But more fundamentally, industry analysts say the increasing returns reflect consumer expectations that everything can be taken back.“It’s getting worse and worse,” Mr. Johnston said.Some of the returns and excess inventory will be donated to charities or returned to the manufacturers. Others get recycled, buried in landfills or burned in incinerators that generate electricity.Early in the pandemic, children’s bicycles could be hard to find. Now, they’re available at big discounts.Liquidators say they offer a more environmentally responsible option by finding new buyers and markets for unwanted products, both those that were returned and those that were never bought in the first place. “We are reducing the carbon footprint,” said Tony Sciarrotta, executive director of the Reverse Logistics Association, the industry trade group. “But there is still too much going to landfills.”Retailers will probably receive only a fraction of the items’ original value from the liquidators but it makes more sense to take the losses and move the goods off the store shelves quickly.Still, liquidation can be a sensitive topic for the big companies that want customers to focus on their “A-goods,” not the failures.Mr. Sciarrotta calls it “the dark side” of retail.On a tour through the Pennsylvania warehouse, Mr. Daunt and the warehouse manager, Trevor Morgan, said they were not allowed to discuss where the products originated. But it was not difficult to figure out.An 85-inch flat-screen TV had an Amazon Prime sticker still on the box. Bathroom vanities came from Home Depot. There was a “home theater” memory foam futon with a built-in cup holder from a Walmart return center.Many unopened boxes on the warehouse floor carried the familiar bull’s-eye logo of Target. Air fryers, baby strollers and towering stacks of Barbie’s “Dream House,” which features a swimming pool, elevator and a home office. (Even Barbie, it seems, has grown tired of working from home.)When Target’s sales exploded during the first year of the pandemic, the company was a darling of Wall Street. But in May, the retailer said it was stuck with an oversupply of certain goods and the company’s stock price plummeted nearly 25 percent in one day. Other retailers’ share prices have also fallen.Walter Crowley regularly buys goods from the warehouse, focusing mostly on discounted home improvement goods, which he resells to local contractors.Target’s stumbles have been an opportunity for people like Walter Crowley.Mr. Crowley regularly rents a U-Haul and drives back and forth to the liquidation warehouse from his home near Binghamton, N.Y.Mr. Crowley, who turns 54 next month, focuses mostly on discounted home improvement goods, which he resells to local contractors, like the multiple pallets of discontinued garage door openers, originally priced at $14,000 that he got for $600.But on a sweltering day earlier this month, he stood outside the warehouse in his U-Haul loading up on items from Target.“I saw its stock got tanked,” said Mr. Crowley, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and sweat pouring down his face. “It’s an ugly situation for them.”He bought several cribs, a set of sheets for his own house and a pink castle for a girl in his neighborhood who just turned 5.“I end up giving a lot of it away to my neighbors, to be honest,” he said. “Some people are barely getting by.”The buyers bid for the goods through online auctions and then drive to the warehouse to pick up their winnings.It’s a diverse group. There was a science teacher who stocked up on plastic parts for his class, as well as a woman who planned to resell her purchases — neon green Igloo coolers, a table saw, baby pajamas — in the Haitian and Jamaican communities of New York. She ships other items to Trinidad.The Pennsylvania warehouse, one of eight that Liquidity Service operates around the country, employs about 20 workers, some of whom have been hired on a temporary basis. The starting pay is $17.50 an hour.Charles Benincasa, a temporary worker at the warehouse, said he’s watched the boxes pile up and worries about the implications for the economy.Charles Benincasa, 39, is a temporary worker who has had numerous “warehousing” jobs, the most recent at the Chewy pet food distribution center in nearby Wilkes-Barre.Mr. Benincasa said his friends and family had gotten in the habit of returning many of the goods they buy online. But as he’s watched the boxes pile up in the Liquidity Services warehouse, he worries about the implications for the economy.“Companies are losing a lot of money,” he said. “There is no free lunch.” More

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    Amazon Hub in Newark Is Canceled After Unions and Local Groups Object

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    The e-commerce giant planned to build an airport cargo center, hire 1,000 workers and invest hundreds of millions of dollars over 20 years.For the second time, plans by Amazon to substantially expand its presence in the New York area have been abandoned after labor and community groups mobilized in opposition.In 2019, Amazon abruptly canceled plans to build a second headquarters in New York City after facing a barrage of criticism that it did not anticipate. This time, the e-commerce giant was unable to complete a deal for a cargo hub at Newark Liberty International Airport.The project, which hinged on a 20-year lease worth hundreds of millions of dollars, attracted opposition after the Port Authority disclosed it last summer.“Unfortunately, the Port Authority and Amazon have been unable to reach an agreement on final lease terms and mutually concluded that further negotiations will not resolve the outstanding issues,” Huntley Lawrence, the Port Authority’s chief operating officer, said in a statement on Thursday.Advocacy groups and unions involved had said they could not support the lease unless Amazon made a set of concessions that included labor agreements and a zero-emissions benchmark at the facility.“This victory signals that if Amazon wants to continue growing in New Jersey, it’s going to have to do it on our terms,” said Sara Cullinane, director of Make the Road New Jersey, an advocacy group that had questioned the deal.Amazon, which expressed confidence in May that the deal would close, expressed disappointment in a statement, adding that “we’re proud of our robust presence in New Jersey and look forward to continued investments in the state.”Amazon had estimated that the project would create more than 1,000 jobs, though many of those jobs could still be created if the Port Authority awards the lease to another company. Two other companies bid on the project.“The growth of air cargo and the redevelopment of airport facilities in a manner that benefits the region as well as the local community remain a top priority of the Port Authority,” Mr. Lawrence, the chief operating officer, added in his statement.The bigger long-term impact may be on Amazon’s ability to deliver packages efficiently in the Northeast, which it serves with airport hubs near Allentown, Pa.; Hartford, Conn.; and Baltimore. “Newark was the obvious choice,” said Marc Wulfraat, an industry consultant who closely tracks Amazon’s facilities. “It is right there on the doorstep of New York City.”Understand the Unionization Efforts at AmazonBeating the Giant: A homegrown, low-budget push to unionize at a Staten Island warehouse led to a historic labor victory. (Workers at another nearby Amazon facility rejected joining a similar effort shortly after.)Retaliation: Weeks after the landmark win, Amazon fired several managers in Staten Island. Some saw it as retaliation for their involvement in the unionization efforts.Diverging Outcomes: Why has a union campaign at Starbucks spread so much further than at the e-commerce giant?Amazon’s Approach: The company has countered unionization efforts with mandatory “training” sessions that carry clear anti-union messages.Mr. Wulfraat said Amazon could look for other commercial airports in the region, even if their locations were less ideal, to support the growing package volume.It was in part the company’s prominence in the state that attracted opposition to the project. A report produced by groups seeking to block it pointed out that the number of Amazon facilities in New Jersey grew to 49 from one between 2013 and 2020, helping to nearly triple the number of warehouse workers in the state, to about 70,000. Over the same period, the average wage for those workers fell to about $44,000 per year from over $53,000 per year, adjusting for inflation, according to Labor Department data.New Jersey is one of the more unionized states in the country, while Amazon has opposed unionization efforts at its facilities.Amazon said that average starting pay for its hourly workers is more than $18 nationally. The median hourly wage in New Jersey was about $23 last year. The company also cited its benefits, including full health coverage for full-time employees as soon as they start working; a 401(k) plan with a 50 percent company match; and up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave.The Port Authority revealed the proposed lease with Amazon in August, the day its board voted to authorize the deal. The authority said that it expected the lease to take effect on or around Nov. 1, according to minutes of the meeting.“It was something that they were trying to slip in without notifying the community, which was quite unfortunate,” said Kim Gaddy, executive director of the South Ward Environmental Alliance, which focuses on environmental issues affecting Newark residents. Under the proposed deal, Amazon tentatively committed to investing $125 million in renovating two buildings at the airport, and to paying the Port Authority more than $300 million over 20 years — including $150 million up front.Amazon’s plan for the Newark hub involved renovating two buildings at the airport.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesBy September, the groups led by Ms. Cullinane and Ms. Gaddy, along with other advocacy groups and unions like the Teamsters and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, began to coordinate their opposition. The groups circulated petitions that collected thousands of signatures from residents and staged public events like rallies and a march.The project appeared to stall after the November timetable for finalizing the lease passed without any announcement.In late March, a spokeswoman for Gov. Phil Murphy, who had initially praised the deal, said in a statement that “the governor encourages anyone doing business in our state to work collaboratively with labor partners in good faith.” (The governor’s office declined to comment on Thursday.) Other politicians in the state appeared to grow skeptical after the Amazon Labor Union’s election victory this year at a Staten Island warehouse, a result Amazon is contesting.Amazon uses an airport facility in Allentown, Pa., to serve the surrounding region, but it has outgrown the capacity.Mark Makela/ReutersAmazon has opened air hubs in recent years to move products through its own logistics network, rather than rely on outside providers. It prefers to fulfill customer orders with local inventory, for cheaper, quicker delivery, but when the product a customer wants is not in a nearby warehouse, it will fly the product to meet its shipping promises.Its operations expansion went into overdrive during the pandemic as e-commerce sales boomed. “We doubled our capacity that we built in the first 25 years of Amazon in just 24 months,” Andy Jassy, the chief executive, told investors in May.But the company has acknowledged that it overbuilt, expanding and hiring more than demand required, and in April it posted its first quarterly loss since 2015. This year Amazon has pulled back from some investments. “We’re trying to defer building activity on properties where we just don’t need the capacity yet, and we’re going let some leases expire as well,” Mr. Jassy said. More

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    Why Union Efforts at Starbucks Have Spread Further Than at Amazon

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    Why has the union campaign spread so much further at the coffee chain than at the e-commerce giant?Roughly six weeks after successful union votes at two Buffalo-area Starbucks stores in December, workers had filed paperwork to hold union elections in at least 20 other Starbucks locations nationwide.By contrast, since the Amazon Labor Union’s victory last month in a vote at a huge warehouse on Staten Island, workers at just one other Amazon facility have filed for a union election — with an obscure union with a checkered past — before promptly withdrawing their petition.The difference may come as a surprise to those who believed that organizing at Amazon might follow the explosive pattern witnessed at Starbucks, where workers at more than 250 stores have filed for elections and the union has prevailed at a vast majority of the locations that have voted.Christian Smalls, the president of the independent Amazon Labor Union, told NPR shortly after the victory that his group had heard from workers in 50 other Amazon facilities, adding, “Just like the Starbucks movement, we want to spread like wildfire across the nation.”The two campaigns share some features — most notably, both are largely overseen by workers rather than professional organizers. And the Amazon Labor Union has made more headway at Amazon than most experts expected, and more than any established union.But unionizing workers at Amazon was always likely to be a longer, messier slog given the scale of its facilities and the nature of the workplace. “Amazon is so much harder a nut to crack,” John Logan, a labor studies professor at San Francisco State University, said by email. The union recently lost a vote at a smaller warehouse on Staten Island.To win, a union must get the backing of more than 50 percent of the workers who cast a vote. That means 15 or 20 pro-union workers can ensure victory in a typical Starbucks store — a level of support that can be summoned in hours or days. At Amazon warehouses, a union frequently would have to win hundreds or thousands of votes.Organizers for the Amazon Labor Union spent hundreds of hours talking with co-workers inside the warehouse during breaks, after work and on days off. They held cookouts at a bus stop outside the warehouse and communicated with hundreds of colleagues through WhatsApp groups.Brian Denning, who leads an Amazon organizing campaign sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America chapter in Portland, Ore., said his group had received six or seven inquiries a week from Amazon workers and contractors after the Staten Island victory, versus one or two a week beforehand.But Mr. Denning, a former Amazon warehouse employee who tells workers that they are the ones who must lead a union campaign, said that many didn’t realize how much effort unionizing required, and that some became discouraged once he conferred with them.Understand the Unionization Efforts at AmazonBeating Amazon: A homegrown, low-budget push to unionize at a Staten Island warehouse led to a historic labor victory. (Workers at another nearby Amazon facility rejected joining a similar effort shortly after.)Retaliation: Weeks after the landmark win, Amazon fired several managers in Staten Island. Some see it as retaliation for their involvement in the unionization efforts.A New Playbook: The success of the Amazon union’s independent drive has organized labor asking whether it should take more of a back seat.Amazon’s Approach: The company has countered unionization efforts with mandatory “training” sessions that carry clear anti-union messages.“We get people saying how do we get an A.L.U. situation here? How do we do that like they did?” Mr. Denning said, adding: “I don’t want to scare them away. But I can’t lie to workers. This is what it is. It’s not for everyone.”At Starbucks, employees work together in a relatively small space, sometimes without a manager present to supervise them directly for hours at a time. This allows them to openly discuss concerns about pay and working conditions and the merits of a union.At Amazon, the warehouses are cavernous, and workers are often more isolated and more closely supervised, especially during an organizing campaign.“What they would do is strategically separate me from everyone in my department,” said Derrick Palmer, an Amazon employee on Staten Island who is one of the union’s vice presidents. “If they see me interacting with that person, they would move them to a different station.”Asked about the allegation, Amazon said it assigned employees to work stations and tasks based on operational needs.Both companies have accused the unions of their own unfair tactics, including intimidating workers and inciting hostile confrontations.Organizing drivers is an even greater challenge, partly because they are officially employed by contractors that Amazon hires, though labor organizers say they would like to pressure the company to address drivers’ concerns.Christy Cameron, a former driver at an Amazon facility near St. Louis, said the job’s setup largely kept drivers from interacting. At the beginning of each shift, a manager for the contractor briefs drivers, who then disperse to their trucks, help load them and get on the road.“It leaves very little time to talk with co-workers outside of a hello,” Ms. Cameron said in a text message, adding that Amazon’s training discouraged discussing working conditions with fellow drivers. “It was generally how they are highly against unionizing and don’t talk about pay and benefits with each other.”Amazon, with about a million U.S. workers, and Starbucks, with just under 250,000, offer similar pay. Amazon has said that its minimum hourly wage is $15 and that the average starting wage in warehouses is above $18. Starbucks has said that as of August its minimum hourly wage will be $15 and that the average will be nearly $17.Starbucks workers celebrated the results of a vote to unionize in Buffalo last year.Joshua Bessex/Associated PressDespite the similarity in pay, organizers say the dynamics of the companies’ work forces can be quite different.At the Staten Island warehouse where Amazon workers voted against unionizing, many employees work four-hour shifts and commute 30 to 60 minutes each way, suggesting they have limited alternatives.“People who go to that length for a four-hour job — it’s a particular group of people who are really struggling to make it,” said Gene Bruskin, a longtime labor organizer who advised the Amazon Labor Union in the two Staten Island elections, in an interview last month.As a result of all this, organizing at Amazon may involve incremental gains rather than high-profile election victories. In the Minneapolis area, a group of primarily Somali-speaking Amazon workers has staged protests and received concessions from the company, such as a review process for firings related to productivity targets. Chicago-area workers involved in the group Amazonians United received pay increases not long after a walkout in December.Ted Miin, an Amazon worker who is one of the group’s members, said the concessions had followed eight or nine months of organizing, versus the minimum of two years he estimates it would have taken to win a union election and negotiate a first contract.For workers who seek a contract, the processes for negotiating one at Starbucks and Amazon may differ. In most cases, bargaining for improvements in compensation and working conditions requires additional pressure on the employer.At Starbucks, that pressure is in some sense the union’s momentum from election victories. “The spread of the campaign gives the union the ability to win in bargaining,” Mr. Logan said. (Starbucks has nonetheless said it will withhold new pay and benefit increases from workers who have unionized, saying such provisions must be bargained.)At Amazon, by contrast, the pressure needed to win a contract will probably come through other means. Some are conventional, like continuing to organize warehouse employees, who could decide to strike if Amazon refuses to recognize them or bargain. The company is challenging the union victory on Staten Island.But the union is also enlisting political allies with an eye toward pressuring Amazon. Mr. Smalls, the union president, testified this month at a Senate hearing that was exploring whether the federal government should deny contracts to companies that violate labor laws.On Thursday, Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, introduced legislation seeking to prevent employers from deducting anti-union activity, like hiring consultants to dissuade workers from unionizing, as a business expense.While many of these efforts may be more symbolic than substantive, some appear to have gotten traction. After the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced last summer that it was awarding Amazon a 20-year lease at Newark Liberty International Airport to develop an air cargo hub, a coalition of community, labor and environmental groups mobilized against the project.The status of the lease, which was to become final by late last year, remains unclear. The Port Authority said that lease negotiations with Amazon were continuing and that it continued to seek community input. An Amazon spokeswoman said the company was confident the deal would close.A spokeswoman for Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey indicated that the company might have to negotiate with labor groups before the deal could go forward. “The governor encourages anyone doing business in our state to work collaboratively with labor partners in good faith,” the spokeswoman said.Karen Weise More

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    NLRB Finds Merit in Union Accusations Against Amazon and Starbucks

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    In a sign that federal labor officials are closely scrutinizing management behavior during union campaigns, the National Labor Relations Board said Friday that it had found merit in accusations that Amazon and Starbucks had violated labor law.At Amazon, the labor board found merit to charges that the company had required workers to attend anti-union meetings at a vast Staten Island warehouse where the Amazon Labor Union won a stunning election victory last month. The determination was communicated to the union Friday by an attorney for the labor board’s regional office in Brooklyn, according to Seth Goldstein, a lawyer representing the union.Such meetings, often known as “captive audience” meetings, are legal under current labor board precedent. But last month, the board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, issued a memo saying that the precedent was at odds with the underlying federal statute, and she indicated that she would seek to challenge it.In the same filing of charges, the Amazon Labor Union accused the company of threatening to withhold benefits from employees if they voted to unionize, and of inaccurately indicating to employees that they could be fired if the warehouse were to unionize and they failed to pay union dues. The labor board also found merit to these accusations, according to an email from the attorney at the regional office, Matt Jackson.Mr. Jackson said the agency would soon issue a complaint reflecting those accusations unless Amazon settled the case. The complaint would be litigated before an administrative law judge, whose decision could be appealed to the labor board in Washington.Understand the Unionization Efforts at AmazonBeating Amazon: A homegrown, low-budget push to unionize at a Staten Island warehouse led to a historic labor victory. (Workers at another nearby Amazon facility rejected joining a similar effort shortly after.)Retaliation: Weeks after the landmark win, Amazon fired several managers in Staten Island. Some see it as retaliation for their involvement in the unionization efforts.A New Playbook: The success of the Amazon union’s independent drive has organized labor asking whether it should take more of a back seat.Amazon’s Approach: The company has countered unionization efforts with mandatory “training” sessions that carry clear anti-union messages.Mr. Goldstein applauded Ms. Abruzzo and the regional office for taking “decisive steps ending required captive audience meetings” and said the right to unionize “will be protected by ending Amazon’s inherently coercive work practices.”Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement that “these allegations are false and we look forward to showing that through the process.”At Starbucks, where the union has won initial votes at more than 50 stores since December, the labor board issued a complaint Friday over a series of charges the union filed, most of them in February, accusing the company of illegal behavior. Those accusations include firing employees in retaliation for supporting the union; threatening employees’ ability to receive new benefits if they choose to unionize; requiring workers to be available for a minimum number of hours to remain employed at a unionized store without bargaining over the change, as a way to force out at least one union supporter; and effectively promising benefits to workers if they decide not to unionize.In addition to those allegations, the labor board found merit to accusations that the company intimidated workers by closing Buffalo-area stores and engaging in surveillance of workers while they were on the job. All of those actions would be illegal.In a statement, Starbucks Workers United, the branch of the union representing workers there, said that the finding “confirms the extent and depravity of Starbucks’s conduct in Western New York for the better part of a year.” It added: “Starbucks will be held accountable for the union-busting minefield they forced workers to walk through in fighting for their right to organize.”Starbucks said in a statement that the complaint doesn’t constitute a judgment by the labor board, adding, “We believe the allegations contained in the complaint are false, and we look forward to presenting our evidence when the allegations are adjudicated.” More