Leaked Amazon Memo Reveals California Public Policy Priorities

Kate Nishimura
·4 min read

A leaked internal memo outlines Amazon‘s plan to squash labor complaints and quell concerns about what the company’s warehouse expansion means for public health.

Amazon’s confidential 2024 Community Engagement Plan, posted online by the Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC) this week, details the Seattle-based giant’s roadmap for Southern California’s Inland Empire. The region encompasses the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside and is home to nation’s largest concentration of fulfillment centers, including Amazon’s second-largest air hub, KSBD. “Consistently, workers talk about pay too low to afford the cost of living, high rates of injury, medical concerns dismissed by AmCare and dangerous high heat, particularly in the summer,” WWRC executive director Sheheryar Kaoosji said.

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“Our most import [sic] public policy priority in Southern California remains labor agitation that uses false narratives and incorrect information to affect public opinion and impact public policy,” according to the Amazon memo. With California’s hourly minimum wage reaching $15.50 this year, pay continues to represent a “significant concern across the state,” especially in Riverside and San Bernardino, where Amazon employs more than 45,000 workers. Forty percent of the company’s goods pass through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on the way to the warehouses and distribution centers in the Inland Empire.

“Labor involvement continues to affect KSBD… where employees have held protests and submitted petitions to leadership asking for a $5 pay increase, and changed working conditions,” Amazon wrote. This year, the Teamsters union held a strike against the company with delivery drivers in Palmdale, Calif. at the DAX8 fulfillment center, and while there “was little media coverage,” the memo warned that labor groups would likely target more of the company’s Southern California facilities.

Amazon “also faces significant reputational challenges,” and “is perceived to build facilities in predominantly communities of color and poverty, negatively impacting their health.”

According to non-profit CalMatters, warehouses in the Inland Empire have ballooned from just 234 in 1980 to over 4,000 today, covering about 1 billion square feet. “Warehouse-induced pollution has created a state of environmental injustice and a public health crisis in San Bernardino and Riverside counties,” dozens of labor and environmental groups and community organizations wrote to Governor Gavin Newsom earlier this year, asking him to halt new construction in the area for one to two years.

With new builds planned for the future, the Amazon memo criticized policymakers such as Eloise Gómez Reyes, a Democrat representing the 50th Assembly District including parts of the Inland Empire, for continuing to “advocate on warehouse moratorium and environmental legislation that would be detrimental to Amazon’s interests.”

AB 1000, authored by Reyes and reintroduced in March after it was withdrawn last year, would institute a “good neighbor policy,” permitting local governments to approve the construction of large warehouses and logistics centers over 100,000 square feet if they are to be built within 1,000 feet of “sensitive receptors” like schools, homes and daycares. According to CalMatters, over 300 warehouses in the Inland Empire are currently within this range. To combat the bill and other potential legislative hurdles, Amazon said it would “execute a detailed outreach strategy in each district to ensure strong relationships with key [third-party] partners, including San Bernardino Valley College Foundation, Children’s Fund, and Feeding America.”

Amazon already had a legislative close call this year. A proposed warehouse tax in Perris, Calif. garnered over 50 percent of votes, but failed to meet the two-thirds threshold needed to institute new taxes on area warehouses. “Similar efforts are likely across the region as municipalities struggle to adapt to the post-Covid stimulus economy,” Amazon wrote. The company spoke to its efforts to curry favor with Perris Mayor Marty Vargas, “an influential elected leader that we have cultivated” through strategic PPE donations during the Covid outbreak.

In the leaked memo, Amazon said it would “continue to build relationships with influential community voices through partnership sponsorship efforts,” including the support of organizations including San Diego Pride, Feeding America, Donors Choose, local community colleges, and International Community Foundation “to positively influence policymakers and generate third party validators and advocates in the Southern California region.”

According to WWRC’s Kaoosji, Amazon is engaged in “a strategy to paper over [the community’s] valid concerns with donations, media clippings and support for policy changes that either benefit Amazon or hurt their competitors.”

“Amazon sees our community as nothing more than warehouses and bodies to staff those warehouses,” he added. “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.”