Building warehouses comes with the promise of jobs. Here's what those positions look like

Under any employer, entry-level warehouse work can be "grueling, mentally and physically," said Richard Hooker Jr., secretary-treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 623. "The employer, they want faster, they want more, but you physically cannot do more."

Hooker was a UPS package handler for 20 years before taking on union leadership in 2020. Organizing workers in the most demanding industrial facilities is a challenge, Hooker said, because turnover is high and big employers have ample resources to "shut it down."

But the push by unionized workers for better working conditions is raising the bar across the industry, he said. When UPS Teamsters threatened to strike last year and won higher wages for members, Teamsters general president Sean M. O'Brien said it set "a new standard in the labor movement."

"Once the UPS contract was ratified, a lot of the Amazon workers took note," Hooker said.

Any highly physical job will cause some injuries, Strauss-Wieder said, but safety problems and poor work conditions are certainly a larger issue at some industrial facilities. She recalled one area employer that saw 300% turnover.

"If you do not treat your workforce well, they're not going to stay," she said.

What makes workers stay

"You can tell pretty soon after you walk into a building how you're going to be treated by a company," Strauss-Wieder said. Employers that provide skills training, English language training to those who need it, cafeterias, and other benefits have better retention.

But foremost, she said, is access to transportation. Warehouses are often distant from regular mass transit service, so some employers bridge the gap with shuttles — a sort of "last mile" delivery system for workers.

In Mercer County, New Jersey, for instance, the ZLine runs free buses and vans from a big NJ Transit bus station in Hamilton to a Robbinsville warehouse development near New Jersey Turnpike Exit 7A that includes two Amazon facilities.

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