Last Updated on December 8, 2023 by BVN
Breanna Reeves
An internal Amazon memo detailing the online retail giant’s 2024 goals to expand the company’s influence and combat labor union efforts for equitable pay and improved working conditions was leaked this week to Ontario-based nonprofit labor organization Warehouse Worker Resource Center.
“Amazon sees our community as nothing more than warehouses and bodies to staff those warehouses,” said Sheheryar Kaoosji, executive director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, in a statement. “It’s a paper thin facade and they should invest just as much time into actually addressing working conditions, pay and the extreme environmental cost to Southern California and the people here.”
Titled “Community Engagement Plan 2024 – Southern California,” the eight-page memo examines Amazon’s community engagement efforts across the Inland Empire, including in San Bernardino where the KSBD Amazon Airhub resides — the largest air facility on the West Coast and one of three air hubs in the nation. The Associated Press independently verified the document’s authenticity.
In an email to Black Voice News, Amazon Spokesperson Jennifer Flagg called an online post of the leaked document “a blatant mischaracterization of Amazon’s work.”
The document gives a closer look at Amazon’s engagement practices and their plans for gaining favor in the region through cultivating favorable relationships with local politicians and local organizations who have not spoken out against the company in order to alter public opinion regarding the company’s controversial practices. In the memo, the company noted that there aren’t enough “Amazonians serving on prominent boards in Southern California.”
Part of the memo notes, “California has the most independent sellers on Amazon across all 50 states. To combat the perception that Amazon hurts small businesses, we will spotlight small business sellers at our CE sponsored events as guests, or feature them on facility tours.”
Someone sent me @amazon’s “confidential” SoCal’s community engagement plan. It’s an interesting read about how they plan to use $$ to non-profits in communities of color to fight legislation that limits environmental affects of warehouses & labor organizing. pic.twitter.com/5GhOuiyamJ
— Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (@LorenaSGonzalez) December 5, 2023
The memo was also shared on social media, via X (formerly Twitter), by California Labor AFL-CIO Union Leader and former State Assemblywoman, Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher who described the memo as “a PR plan that preys on communities in need to keep wages low [and] environmental damage aggregated in low income communities…”
Last October, Amazon workers of the KSBD facility hosted walkouts, strikes and pickets in an effort to push for fair wages and safety measures at the facility. Amazon workers who participated in these events were later targeted and surveilled in what they described as “union-busting tactics.”
The memo recognizes demands for wage increases as a “significant concern” as well as ongoing legislation that supports warehouse moratoriums and environmental legislation which they emphasize as being “detrimental to Amazon’s interests.” The document listed strategies they can employ in order to “[showcase] Amazon as a leader in sustainability and counter the voices of environmental activists against Amazon.”
Several local advocates, activists and leaders learned of the leaked document and addressed Amazon’s memo, including Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes (D-Colton) who is referenced in the memo as an advocate for warehouse moratoriums and environmental justice, and therefore a threat to Amazon’s interests.
“I wear it as a badge of honor for being recognized for standing up for both environmental justice and workers,” Gomez said in a statement. “In the Inland Empire, where we continue to struggle with some of the poorest air quality in the country, I am dedicated to crafting policies that safeguard both health and good jobs.”
A 2023 report called “Region In Crisis” found that there are more than 300 warehouses that are 1000 feet or less from 139 Inland Empire schools and over 600 warehouses surround these same schools at 1,500 feet. The report, included in a letter sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom, was developed by the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ), Sierra Club (San Gorgonio Chapter ) and the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability at Pitzer College.
The report emphasized the worsening health impacts the growing warehouse industry has had on the region as result of warehouse-induced pollution which “has created a state of environmental injustice and a public health crisis in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.”
“This is shocking, but not surprising, this only validates every effort we have done as an organization to hold corporations and developers like Amazon, accountable for their negligence and perpetrating unsafe and unhealthy communities in the Inland Valley,” CCAEJ Executive Director Ana Gonzalez said in a statement.
“Not to mention the conditions they have created of displacement of housing and low wages that in fact lead to hunger and homelessness, shame.”
As the memo outlines new approaches and strategies to community engagement in the Inland Empire for 2024, it lists three things Amazon will keep a close eye on: labor organizing among Amazon delivery service partners, community organizations who don’t accept charitable donations and warehouse moratoriums.
“Through employee volunteerism or our charitable donations, it is always Amazon’s intention to help support the communities where we work in a way that is most responsive to the needs of that community,” Flagg said in an email.
Over the last several years community members and local activists have encouraged cities to pass warehouse moratoriums that limit the expansion of warehouses within communities like Moreno Valley, Fontana and Beaumont in which warehouse expansion proposals were voted down earlier this year. One of these proposals suggested the construction of warehouses next to high school sports fields.