Amazon’s Sortation Centers Should Be a Key Target for Labor

Organizing Amazon is obviously a daunting project.

Not only is the company willing to use all the tricks of its notoriously anti-union competitor Walmart, but it’s also growing rapidly. In 2022 and 2023, Amazon added 160 million square feet to its distribution network. That’s 10 million more square feet than Walmart’s entire distribution network.

Amazon’s automation game has also taken off in the last couple years, and the company has launched two key new ventures, Supply Chain by Amazon (which provides logistical services for vendors) and Amazon Shipping (its parcel delivery operation).

Organizing Amazon at the scale needed will require huge resources, an order of magnitude more than the labor movement is currently investing. But it will also require an understanding of the company’s vulnerabilities and a comprehensive strategy for taking advantage of them.

One facet of this task is identifying the weakest links in Amazon’s supply chain. In my estimation, the best nodes in its supply chain network to target with new organizing efforts are the Sortation Centers.

THE WEAKEST LINK

Sortation Centers are the “middle-mile” facilities in Amazon’s network. When you place an order at Amazon, it’s picked up and boxed up at a Fulfillment Center. From the Fulfillment Center, packages then go to a Sortation Center, where they are sorted by zip code and sent to Delivery Stations. At these “last-mile” facilities, packages are loaded onto vans bound for your doorstep.

Sortation Centers thus link the Fulfillment Centers to the Delivery Stations. It’s a little bit more complicated in reality, but these are the basics.

Sortation Centers are the keystone to Amazon’s outbound efficiency. Without them, Amazon would have to rely on third-party delivery, as it did before 2014, when it first began building out its Sortation Center network. Maximal efficiency at the Fulfillment Centers might not mean much if from there Amazon just dumped packages into USPS or UPS.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Sortation Centers are good targets for labor organizing for four other reasons.

First, there is not as much redundancy built into Amazon’s sortation network as there is in its fulfillment network. As I review here, Amazon can and regularly does re-route package fulfillment from one facility to another, and this is one reason why it’s really hard to organize Fulfillment Centers. If you managed to organize an effective strike at a Fulfillment Center, it’s unlikely it would greatly disrupt Amazon’s overall operation.

Amazon would undoubtedly find ways to circumvent a similar action at a Sortation Center, but it wouldn’t be nearly as easy. Sortation Centers are generally located on the outskirts of urban areas, and they service a set turf of Delivery Stations nearby. So the actual physical location of Sortation Centers matters more than it does at Fulfillment Centers. Each Sortation Center is where it is because it’s the best possible location Amazon could find to service Delivery Stations in a particular area.

HUBS VS. SPOKES

Second, Sortation Centers are more crucial to Amazon’s network than Delivery Stations. Sortation Centers and Delivery Stations are like the “hubs” and “spokes” of the UPS and FedEx distribution networks.

The “hub and spoke” model allows for economies of scale and scope, but it also creates vulnerabilities in the system. Shut down a spoke facility (like a Delivery Station), and the problem is confined to the particular geographic area it serves. Shut down a hub facility (like a Sortation Center), and every one of the spokes is affected.

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Third, and relatedly, there are simply fewer Sortation Centers than there are Fulfillment Centers or Delivery Stations. By my latest count, there are 388 Amazon Fulfillment Centers and 707 Delivery Stations. But there are only 120 Sortation Centers.

COMPETING WITH UPS

Finally, Sortation Centers are only going to grow in importance as Amazon competes with “legacy” parcel carriers like UPS.

In 2023, Amazon shocked the parcel industry by leapfrogging UPS in delivery volume. That was largely due to the increase in Amazon’s own retail volume, but 2023 also saw the launch of Amazon Shipping.

Now Amazon delivery drivers do both dropoffs and pickups, much like FedEx and UPS drivers. And that flow is channeled through the Sortation Centers.

DELIVERY MATTERS TOO

There are a number of public recognition campaigns now underway at Amazon’s Delivery Stations around the country. Some are on strike today, part of the biggest day of strikes by Amazon workers in the U.S. yet. There is certainly a strong argument for targeting these facilities. “Last-mile” operations are much more difficult to automate than warehouses.

Perhaps the Teamsters can rack up some Delivery Station victories and build something like the momentum of a Starbucks campaign: Delivery Station workers could begin sharing knowledge and support, and eventually gain enough strength to bring the company to the table.

There is nothing contradictory about supporting Delivery Station organizing while also seeding new organizing at Sortation Centers. In fact, organizing Sortation Centers would make organizing easier at Delivery Stations.

NO ACHILLES HEEL

There are other facilities in the Amazon network that are good targets as well. The Teamsters have active campaigns at Amazon’s KCVG (Cincinnati) and KSBD (San Bernardino) air cargo hubs. Air cargo hubs are massive prizes, because they are of tremendous value to the company and they’re very hard to move.

And then there’s Amazon’s goods receiving network, the “Inbound Cross-Docks (IXDs).” Amazon’s new national IXDs form the backbone of Supply Chain by Amazon.

But I believe Sortation Centers are particularly ripe targets for organizing, because they are rooted in place, there’s relatively few of them, and they are critical to Amazon’s structure, including its growing third-party logistics and parcel operations.

Amazon most certainly does not have an Achilles heel—but its distribution network is not invincible either.

Benjamin Y. Fong runs a newsletter devoted to labor and logistics with Scott Jenkins called On the Seams.