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C2 THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2021 Amazon surpasses Boeing as Washington state’s biggest employer KATHERINE KHASHIMOVA LONG The Seattle Times M ove over, Boeing. Washington state is now Amazonia. Last year, Amazon — which in the 26 years since its found- ing in CEO Jeff Bezos’ Clyde Hill garage has emerged as a major player in retail, logistics and cloud computing — sur- passed Boeing as the state’s largest private employer, usurp- ing a title the airplane manu- facturer had likely held since the post-World War II era, said aerospace historian Cory Graff. The milestone speaks to the new economic realities wrought by the pandemic, experts say, but also to the in- creasingly tenuous nature of much blue-collar work, em- ployers’ changing relationship with labor and the rise of a class of highly paid technology workers whose preferences are remaking the Seattle area. Amazon thrived during the pandemic, due both to booming online shopping and increasing reliance on its cloud-computing services, which power many of the tech- nologies behind remote work and life under lockdown. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, Amazon charted re- cord-high sales and profits; its share price rose 72% last year while Boeing’s dropped 36%. Alongside Amazon’s re- cord-setting financial perfor- mance was a record-setting hiring spree. Globally, the com- pany added more than 400,000 workers in 2020 in what it says is the largest peacetime worker mobilization in history. More than 16,500 of those new hires were in Washington state, where Amazon ended 2020 with more than 80,000 em- ployees, according to a com- pany spokesperson, a nearly 25% increase over 2019. Boeing, meanwhile, slashed its Washington workforce by nearly 13,000 people last year, as the travel industry’s plunge into the red compounded Boe- ing’s pre-pandemic financial pain from the lengthy ground- ing of its 737 MAX aircraft. At the start of 2020, 71,829 Washingtonians worked for Boeing, according to disclo- sure forms filed with the state Department of Revenue. By year-end, a combination of voluntary buyouts, layoffs and attrition reduced that number 18% to roughly 58,800 people, with analysts warning job cuts could continue in 2021. Boeing and its employees are no strangers to cycles of boom and bust, and the effects of the pandemic and reputational fallout from faulty engineer- ing that caused two 737 MAX plane crashes are likely to re- cede eventually. Nonetheless, Amazon’s emergence as Washington’s top employer signifies more enduring changes to the state’s economy, said Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washing- ton, where she researches the high-tech industry. “These two companies are shorthand examples of the changing contours of Ameri- can capitalism,” O’Mara said. Boeing and Amazon, she said, are “emblems of ... the bigger trajectory of labor, of what opportunity is afforded to an American worker.” Companies’ relationships with labor “Boeing and Amazon are such stark contrasts. It’s two models of the U.S. economy, one based around manufactur- ing, one around consumption,” said Andrew Hedden, the as- sociate director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Stud- ies at the University of Wash- ington. “It’s fascinating that Se- attle has been headquarters for both of them.” Another major contrast, translating into a gulf of dif- ferences in how blue-collar workers are paid and treated, Hedden said, is the companies’ relationship with labor. It’s not that Boeing supports unions, said Jon Holden, the president of the local represent- Amazon » Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times Employees at Amazon’s Kent fulfillment center, where parts of the company’s coronavirus response have been tested, on June 11. Boeing » Mike Siegel/The Seattle Times A new Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, built for American Airlines, is seen moving along the runway at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, in November 2020. Boeing is moving all 787 production from Everett to its plant in Charleston, South Carolina. Kjell Redal and Mike Siegel/The Seattle Times LEFT: Amazon’s growth has changed Seattle’s economic and physical landscape, and its Spheres downtown are just one example. RIGHT: Boeing’s Everett, Washington, factory, known as the largest manufacturing building in the world, has produced the 747, 767, 777, and the 787 airplanes. ing Seattle-area Boeing ma- chinists. He believes Boeing is moving the 787 to South Car- olina, a right-to-work state, in part due to the company’s tur- bulent relationship with orga- nized labor in Washington. But the company has been forced to negotiate with unions for most of its 104-year history after voluntarily recognizing the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in 1935 — resulting in famously sturdy wages and ample benefits for union mem- bers, who at one point consti- tuted 60% of Boeing’s work- force but now make up roughly one-third. Last year, Boeing machinists earned, on aver- age, $35.88 an hour, said union spokesperson Connie Kelliher. Charlie Grieser, who worked for 37 years as a Boeing ma- chinist, quality-control in- spector and in experimental flight testing and robotics be- fore retiring in 2016, said the job brought him a lifestyle of plenty: A golf- and fish- ing-filled retirement in sunny Sequim. Educational benefits. New trucks. An adage Grieser is fond of repeating about his time at Boeing: “Come for the fun. Stay for the money.” That money, as well as pref- erential hiring policies for se- nior union members, birthed generations of Boeing “lifers.” On average, machinists work at Boeing for more than a decade, Kelliher said. Meanwhile, in a reflection of falling union membership nationwide, as well as chang- ing legal standards that make it easier for employers to thwart union organizing, none of Am- azon’s American warehouses are unionized. The company has employed a suite of tactics to keep worker organizing at bay, including closing job sites, training managers to extol the merits of a non-unionized workplace, monitoring ware- houses for pro-union senti- ment and firing employees who speak out about safety condi- tions at warehouses. In a statement, the company said it respects employees’ right to “join, form or not to join a labor union or other lawful or- ganization of their own selec- tion, without fear of retaliation, intimidation or harassment.” In contrast to Boeing’s “lif- ers,” a job at an Amazon ware- house for most workers is a temporary gig, one whose rhythms are oceans removed from the technical complexity of assembling an aircraft — and from the wages commensurate with such high-skilled work. We hear you. Pay starts at $15 an hour, or more in some places. About 813 full-time Amazon work- ers in Washington use food stamps, the fifth-highest num- ber of any employer in the state, after Safeway, Wal-Mart, Uber and McDonald’s, the federal Government Account- ability Office estimated in No- vember. Starting pay at Amazon warehouses is higher than Washington’s minimum wage, and many workers are afforded a suite of benefits, including health care, upskilling and paid parental leave, the company said in a statement. That some Amazon workers rely on food stamps possibly reflects that Amazon hires a large number of seasonal and temporary em- ployees who may have quali- fied for assistance if they only worked at Amazon part of the year, the company added. The churn of tens of thou- sands of temporary workers through Amazon warehouses underscores, O’Mara said, the increasingly precarious nature of blue-collar work. The company employs so much seasonal labor that tak- ing into account all of Am- azon’s short-term hires — brought onboard for a few months during the holidays — Amazon actually surpassed Boeing as the state’s largest employer in 2019. That year, 81,897 Washingtonians worked for Amazon. By the end of 2019, though, Amazon employed 63,380 workers, according to tax in- centive disclosure forms filed with the state Department of Revenue — meaning roughly 18,500 people, one-third of Amazon’s workforce, didn’t fin- ish the year with the company. That turnover rate has likely stayed high during Amazon’s coronavirus staffing push: A recent Seattle Times analysis of Amazon’s hiring patterns found that turnover at its warehouses during the pandemic was at least twice that of industry av- erages. Certainly, not everyone at Amazon’s warehouses leaves quickly. Some thrive on the rig- ors of the job, and earn enough to afford to live even in the Puget Sound region, where home prices have increased faster than nearly anywhere else in the country for much of the past five years. David Romero, a safety man- ager at Amazon’s Kent fulfill- ment center, has been with the company for five years, starting as an entry-level associate after serving two tours of duty with the Air Force in Iraq. He owns a home in Spanaway, goes kay- aking with his two children on weekends, and said much of his time is consumed by com- munity service projects with an Amazon affinity group for veterans. “I call them my family,” he said. “We’re able to have that sense of camaraderie.” Most blue-collar Amazon employees, though, won’t stay with the company as long as Romero — like Max, who asked not to use his last name because he didn’t want to be seen as criticizing his former employer. Between 2015 and 2019, he worked two stints at Am- azon facilities in Seattle and New York. Like many of his co-workers, Max cycled in and out of employment with the commerce behemoth because, he said, it paid the bills and seemed to be one of the only places hiring. Max described his work, in photo studios producing pic- tures for Amazon listings, as fast-paced and repetitive, with closely tracked performance metrics. He most recently earned $18 an hour. “You could make the argu- ment that’s what people want in the gig economy,” he said. But his experience generated a pro- found sense of malaise, he said, that he was entirely replaceable. Now living in Idaho, Max drove 300 miles to a recent Se- attle protest advocating Ama- zon return a greater portion of its record 2020 profits to op- erations and warehouse work- ers — some of whom, he said, feel so surveilled and anxious about affording necessities like rent that they’re afraid to take bathroom breaks on the job. He also pointed to reports that Amazon warehouse workers suffer on-the-job injuries at rates exceeding industry aver- ages, according to Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. (Amazon has said Reveal’s calculations are inac- curate.) Similar concerns prompted workers at one Amazon ful- fillment center in Alabama to signal their intent to unionize last year, possibly forecasting future upheaval at Amazon job sites, including in Washington, O’Mara said. “The state has a long history of doing well by working peo- ple,” she said. “To be the son or grandson of a Boeing machin- ist whose whole family’s eco- nomic trajectory was steadily moving upward, and now the best job you can have is work- ing in a fulfillment center for $15 an hour? It fuels a lot of po- litical discontent.” RETAILER IMAGE We’re dedicated to helping you! Supporting our community’s most vulnerable families, now more than ever. Contact your local DISH Authorized Retailer today! 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