Amazon.com Inc.
(NASDAQ: AMZN) will build a 140,000-square foot delivery station
employing up to 600 people in the Anoka County city of Centerville, the
latest move by the e-commerce giant to boost its Twin Cities
distribution network.
NorthMetroTV has a report
on the plans by Seattle-based Amazon, which were approved by
Centerville City Council in late May. (The proposal has been in the
works for a while, but without Amazon's name attached; development
officials referred to the delivery center only as "Project Banjo.")
The Star Tribune also has a report,
noting that the facility will add hundreds of trucks and vans to the
site. Amazon has pledged up to $650,000 to make street improvements like
roundabouts and left-turn lanes to help with increased traffic.
Delivery
stations are much smaller than Amazon's big fulfillment centers, like
its facility in Shakopee. They're typically positioned near the end of
company's shipping chain, taking pallets of goods from larger
distribution centers, sorting them by route and dispatching vans for
final delivery. You can read more about how Amazon's total delivery system works here.
Amazon already has two delivery centers in the metro, in Eagan and Maple Grove. It also announced one in St. Cloud last year, and a supply-chain expert told the Business Journal that others are probably planned in markets like Duluth and Rochester.
Dandy!
The item is silent on whether Amazon will own and run the facility, or use a straw party, and whether it will employ drivers, or play the Bezos independent contractor ploy. Be vigilant. It matters.
If employees, they can uniolnize. If not, they cannot. Bezos is known for an abiding dislike of unionization at his facilities. He does not want employees to have union protections, and if they are "independent contractors" they cannot gain union protections. If Bezos uses a straw party, then workers have to unionize against it, not Amazon, unless at law in litigation they can pierce the corporate veil to get to the real boss.
https://flex.amazon.com/That site ends, asking, "Are you Ready?" If so, should you be ready bend forward and grab your socks? Or is it something better than Uber trickery?
BOTTOM LINE: Like Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Jeff Bezos opposes unionization
To crush
the historic Staten Island union vote, the online retailer employed a
major Democratic firm that has long worked for labor.
(AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
A recent union drive at an Amazon warehouse on Staten
Island didn’t just deliver the first labor victory anywhere in the
online retailer’s U.S. operations when workers voted to unionize
there. The bitter fight over the unionization effort has also provided a
rare glimpse into how Democrats' consulting class simultaneously
advises — and profits off — purportedly pro-union Democratic
politicians, corporate union busters, and the labor movement itself.
The prominent Democratic consulting firm Global Strategy Group (GSG) was recently exposed
for helping spearhead Amazon’s attempt to crush the Staten Island union
drive. It turns out that the firm — which reaps millions of dollars
each election cycle conducting polling, research, and public relations
for candidates and liberal organizations — has also long done work for
some of the country’s largest unions.
GSG originally sought to defend its work for Amazon, claiming in a since-deleted statement that a report from CNBC “incorrectly attributes anti-union work to GSG that was done by others.” On Monday, the firm issued
a half-hearted apology, writing: “While there have been factual
inaccuracies in recent reports about our work for Amazon, being involved
in any way was a mistake. We are deeply sorry, and we have resigned
that work.”
When approached by The Lever, two of the
unions that previously contracted with GSG — the American Federation of
Teachers and a New York chapter of the Service Employees International
Union — said that they will no longer employ the firm.
However,
five unions and several big-name Democratic candidates that have
employed the firm in recent years did not respond to a request for
comment as to whether they would sever ties with the company.
The
episode highlights a central conflict at the heart of today’s Democratic
Party, one with real implications for organized labor: Democrats
present themselves as the party of organized labor, while also relying
on campaign contributions from major corporations. Similarly, many of
the consultants who work for labor unions or to elect Democrats spend as much or more of their time
working on behalf of corporate interests that pay far better, so they
have little real loyalty to Democrats’ working-class base.
The beat goes on. Mammon recruits to where vigilance is forever necessary.
