Amazon has changed its plans for at least five new warehouses across the Bay Area in California in recent months amid pushback from labor unions and environmental groups.
Since 2020, the company and its affiliates have withdrawn, delayed or modified plans for delivery stations – where packages are offloaded from trucks and prepared for delivery – in North Richmond, San Jose, San Francisco, Fremont and Hayward after local labor groups and environmental activists alleged the e-commerce giant would bring low-quality jobs and a polluting fleet of vans and trucks. And on March 22, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed an 18-month moratorium on all Amazon and other last-mile delivery stations in the city.
The five delivery stations are a small fraction of Amazon’s overall footprint in California, where the company employs 170,000 full-time and part-time employees and operates 110 fulfillment centers and delivery stations. An Amazon spokesperson, Glenn Kuper, would not provide Bay Area-specific figures, but rejected the idea that the changes were a result of pushback, saying in an email, “It is common for us to explore multiple locations simultaneously and adjust based on our operational needs.”
