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Amazon Fulfilment Centre Tours

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We call our warehouses fulfilment centres because the entire process is fulfilled from start to finish – inventory comes in from manufacturers and is shipped out directly to customers.

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If you are in the United States or Canada , you can tour an Amazon fulfillment center at 23 locations across North America .

If you are in the UK , Germany , France , Italy , Spain , Poland , or the Czech Republic , you can find an Amazon FC tour location here .

But until you take your tour and see for yourself, see how our amazing people and amazing technology come together to fulfill your order once you click “Buy Now” on Amazon.com.

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What a Tour of an Amazon Fulfillment Center Reveals

By Anna Wiener

SMF1, an Amazon fulfillment center on the edge of Sacramento, California, is a low, gray, utilitarian building. Amid the yellowing fields of the Central Valley, it resembles a cluster of Legos abandoned in an untended back yard. The facility is named for Sacramento’s SMF airport, which is just across the road; it employs around two thousand people, and its forbidding architecture inspires obedience. On a recent afternoon, seven women with tight faces and heavy eye makeup stood in its lobby, wearing the comfortable walking shoes that Amazon had requested. They tried to peer past six sets of full-height turnstiles, above which Amazon’s internal slogan—“Work hard. Have fun. Make history”—had been painted on the wall. Beyond the turnstiles were nine gray metal detectors, reserved for exiting employees, and a multicolored balloon arch. The climate was controlled. There was an oppressive mechanical hum. “This is already amazing,” a woman wearing pedal pushers said.

The ride-share driver who’d ferried me to SMF1 from the train station had been skeptical when I told him I was there to tour an Amazon fulfillment center. “What’s your objective?” he asked. “You looking for some twelve-year-old Asian kids who are sewing things with their teeth?” As we turned into the parking lot, past a sign that read “Hiring Event,” I saw myself through his eyes—a writer for an East Coast publication, wearing loafers and a weather-inappropriate cashmere sweater, on a field trip from San Francisco to observe the working class. I wasn’t delusional. I didn’t expect to witness labor abuses on a scheduled, public, corporate propaganda tour. (Amazon has been offering fulfillment-center tours since 2015, and the company has expanded them to twenty-two facilities across the country since January, as part of a larger public-relations response to criticism of its treatment of hourly workers.) But I did want a glimpse, however small, of an opaque, privately owned system that has become part of daily life for millions of people. I also wanted, despite the tour’s Potemkin-village potential, to see Amazon’s interpretation of its best self.

In the lobby, our guide, a young woman radiant with enthusiasm, distributed guest badges. (I took the regular tour available to the public and didn’t identify myself as a journalist.) Our group filed under the balloon arch. We passed a map of the world with a note beside it: “Where do you identify with? Place a star on the map to show us!” A sign declared the fulfillment center a “No Phone Zone.” A dry-erase board, labelled “Voice of the Company,” contained tidy corporate announcements and exhortations; on another, “Voice of the Associate,” someone had scrawled, “You guys are never open to negotiations.”

We entered a classroom, where headsets and receivers were distributed.

“Why do you do these tours?” one of the guests asked.

“To show what goes on behind closed doors,” our guide said. There wasn’t much to hide, she said, and flashed us a smile. “And to combat misinformation,” she added.

Our first stop was the robots. Single file, we marched up a stairwell, onto a vast and labyrinthine warehouse floor. (The fulfillment center has four levels; the top three overlook a shipping bay on the first.) Taped lines on the floor indicated where to walk, guiding us to the perimeter of a vast pen, within which the robots rolled like overfed Roombas. Our guide asked us not to touch the fence, and everyone gave it several feet of clearance. “Don’t worry,” she clarified. “It’s not electric or anything.” (An Amazon spokesperson later said that there would have been no reason to avoid the fence.) Meanwhile, in the pen, the robots changed direction with the sharp, angular precision of a Broadway ensemble. Each robot carried a tower of yellow, cubby-like bins, which Amazon calls “pods.” In the pods, I spotted a tub of Colonix powder, a large container of Ultimate Omega, a toner cartridge, Meow Mix, pineapple-print linens, a bag of plastic Easter eggs, Crest toothpaste, and several boxes stamped with the logo of InvoSpa, a maker of self-massage products. It was an Advent calendar of late-night, 1-Click decisions.

We watched as, prompted by listings on a screen, an order picker removed items from the pods, placing them into another set of bins, called totes. Every forty minutes, our guide explained, the screens prompted workers to take a “mind and body break”; the picker we were observing had selected a hamstring exercise.

We walked down to the packing area. It felt endless and oddly desolate, with many of its stations unmanned. A thin young man, dressed head to toe in black, lifted a single tub of Pure Protein 100% Whey Powder from a tote, put it into a box, taped it shut, and moved it to a conveyer belt. The tour clustered around him, as if at an aquarium, before moving to an elevated pathway above the shipping bay. One guest waved to a distant group of workers, like a boater signalling to strangers on shore, before we returned to our classroom. By way of concluding our tour, our guide said that if Amazon were exposing a secret it might be that the company is a little more efficient than it lets on.

Outside, the heat was thick and dense. A weather app confirmed animal intuition: it was ninety-six degrees. People stood around, looking a little dazed. “Every place, I was like, ‘Oh, I’d work here,’ ” one of the tight-faced women said. Her friend raised an eyebrow. People posed for photographs with SMF1 in the background and, in the unforgiving sun, trickled back to their cars.

There has never been a commercial experience quite like Amazon. The site, on which six-packs of bicycle shorts, pepper spray, Keurig pods, and prefab tiny homes coexist, doesn’t resemble a traditional marketplace so much as the Mall of America after a major earthquake. (As it happens, the Mall of America, in Minnesota, now houses a wall of Amazon Lockers—self-service pickup portals for items ordered on Amazon.) Amazon’s third-party seller program, which enables anyone to list, sell, and ship products using the company’s interface and infrastructure, further contributes to the sense that it is a lawless, consumerist Wild West. Knockoffs abound, as do deceptively or fraudulently labelled items: in his examination of Amazon for this magazine, published earlier this month, Charles Duhigg detailed the Sisyphean efforts undertaken by Birkenstock to remove its products from Amazon’s reseller platform for fear that its brand would be tainted by fakes. (Amazon frequently says that it prohibits counterfeits and invests “heavily” in detecting and removing them from its listings.) It appears that nonsensical, exorbitantly priced e-books in Amazon’s marketplace have been sold and purchased by money launderers (Amazon told the Guardian that it takes steps to stop fraud when the company discovers it); bot-generated listings tout shower curtains and phone cases that feature random stock photos . According to the firm TJI Research, Amazon itself offers at least seven hundred and eighty private-label or Amazon-exclusive brands, hawking everything from furniture to lingerie and baby wipes. Its fulfillment centers are nodes where unrelated objects, manufactured in places such as Dhaka, Sri City, and Shenzhen, come together—way stations, thoroughfares, culverts for a nebulous, undular mass of everything people could, and apparently do, want.

My own apartment has taken on qualities of a fulfillment center—it’s another node where objects of unknown provenance aggregate. In the mid-two-thousands, I worked at an independent bookstore, and for nearly a decade I boycotted Amazon. The site tells me that I caved on January 4, 2016, when I bought a Brother HL-L2380DW Wireless Monochrome Laser Printer. Since then, my boyfriend has used the phrase “Amazon culture” to refer to the various objects that I have summoned, often late at night, to our front door: a variety box of 1,120 self-adhesive googly eyes; an AmazonBasics paper shredder; an ESARORA Ice Roller for Face & Eye, Puffiness, Migraine, Pain Relief and Minor Injury, Skin Care Products (Blue); an Anwenk Electric Sweater Shaver Lint Shaver Lint Remover for Sweater Knitwear Carpet Blankets; a Topo Comfort Mat by Ergodriven Not-Flat Standing Desk Anti-Fatigue Mat with Calculated Terrain [Must-Have for Any Standing Desk] (Obsidian Black).

As a consumption diary, my order history is not flattering. Many of my purchases happened through curated, affiliate-linked roundups on recommendation sites, such as Wirecutter and the Strategist—“I’ll Talk to Anyone Who Will Listen About These Comfortable Boots”; “The 13 Products I Use for My Chronic Raccoon Eyes”; “The Best Emergency Preparedness Supplies”—which offered me solutions to problems I didn’t know I had. Earlier this year, in an essay called “ What Is Amazon? ,” the tech C.E.O. Zack Kanter highlighted the company’s clever habit of encouraging partners or customers to do work that Amazon itself would prefer not to do, because of its “bureaucratic complexity.” Sites like the Strategist curate Amazon’s selection better than the company itself ever could; such search-engine-optimized aggregations of search-engine-optimized products serve as both a revenue channel for affiliate partners (influencers, bloggers, legacy magazines) and a service to Amazon. ( The New Yorker derives some of its revenue from affiliate links to Amazon.) The arrangement makes for a fascinating business-school case study. My own narrative was simpler: I felt bad about myself, so I bought something.

I felt bad after visiting the fulfillment center, too. (“You sound like someone who has just seen an industrial chicken farm for the first time,” a friend said, when I recounted the trip.) I was mad about the perverse incentives of capitalism; disgusted by the extractive nature of the global supply chain; ashamed at myself for being so susceptible to marketing. I also felt awe at the scale and precision of Amazon’s logistics. From its strips of perfectly measured packing tape to the minute-long breaks it metes out to its workers, the company operates with unprecedented efficiency. It would be wonderful if Amazon didn’t fight worker efforts to unionize, or increased their hourly pay, or consumed less energy, or better moderated its marketplace. But that version of Amazon could only exist if the company revised its core values : speed, frugality, optimization, and an “obsession” with the customer. Reformers talk more and more about breaking up the big tech companies; some leftists muse about nationalization. Regulation may change Amazon. For now, it’s exactly what it wants to be.

In late September, a group emerged, Amazonians United, Sacramento, to protest the company’s internal policies. “We are an organization of Amazon workers in the Sacramento area that is working to protect our rights at work, improve our working conditions, and create a real voice for Amazon associates,” reads a post on the Amazonians United, Sacramento Facebook page. According to the Verge, the group coalesced after an employee at the DSM1 “delivery station” in West Sacramento took time off to mourn her mother-in-law and was promptly fired upon return, having overdrawn her leave balance by one hour, because her bereavement leave hadn’t started yet. (Amazon said it offers hourly workers three days of paid bereavement leave, but added that it does not comment on personnel matters.) Twenty-four hours after the group circulated and submitted a petition, the employee was rehired, with back pay. Recent reporting on Amazon’s fulfillment centers has yielded a spate of stories about overwork, physical exhaustion, subpar facilities, and “productivity” firings for employees unable to keep up with demanding quotas. In his article on Amazon, Duhigg quotes Safiyo Mohamed, who, while still in her twenties, tore an intervertebral disk in her back working as a sorter at a Minnesota fulfillment center. “Amazon doesn’t want humans, they want robots,” she told Duhigg.

The same critical pressures that led Amazon to offer its fulfillment-center tours have pushed the company into other public-relations efforts. In August, it received a wave of negative attention for the Twitter accounts it had created for its so-called “fulfillment center ambassadors”—accounts, with display names including the words “Amazon FC Ambassador” and the parcel emoji, which sometimes tweeted in response to criticism and against pro-union sentiment. (“Sweating while working is common at any job,” one ambassador tweeted. “So excited for Amazon family day at my site this weekend,” wrote another.) In response, a number of Twitter users—many of them journalists—jokingly changed their display names to include the words “FC Ambassador” and the parcel emoji, turning the corporate Twitter program into a meme. Their mockery spoke to the company’s reputation as a cold, functional, and impersonal juggernaut. Unlike many of the larger tech corporations, Amazon does not promote idealistic, utopian, or progressive narratives about community or connection; it strives, almost always, to present itself as a kind of infrastructure. Perhaps it was inevitable that its efforts to humanize itself would scan as stilted and generic—the AmazonBasics of public relations.

The unnerving truth is that facelessness and placelessness are part of the value Amazon offers. Amazon culture is anonymity culture: anonymous objects ordered through an anonymous interface from anonymous sellers, funnelled, sorted, shipped, and delivered by workers who are often unseen. Even the company’s brick-and-mortar Amazon Go markets, which sell prepared foods and snacks, are designed to minimize interpersonal interaction by eliminating things like visible food production and checkout registers. (In its advertising, Amazon describes these shops in terms of the software that runs them: “What if we could weave the most advanced machine learning, computer vision, and A.I. into the very fabric of a store?” a marketing video asks.) The Amazon shopping experience appeals, in part, because it strips away the emotional dimensions of consumerism, like shame, guilt, or impatience. And yet—while it can be a relief to use a digitally mediated portal to purchase items like Spanx, or postnatal perineal balm—this efficient blankness comes at some human cost. It’s in this sense that the fulfillment-center tours run counter to the company’s self-image. Amazon is actually a company full of people, with all their inefficiencies—their bodily needs, their grief, their camaraderie, boredom, humor, and despair. The anonymity to which Amazon shoppers are accustomed is palliative, illusory.

On a recent afternoon, working from home, I heard the doorbell ring. I raced down the stairs, opened the door, and peered outside. No one was there. A public bus exhaled at the end of the block; the street was quiet and still. I bent down and picked up the box. I had the distinct feeling that I could be anywhere.

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By Charles Duhigg

By Paige Williams

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Inside Amazon’s Secret Warehouse: A Jaw-Dropping Tour You Can’t Miss! Amazon Fulfillment Center

Tour Amazon Fulfillment Center for great family fun. Maybe you live by one. Or, if you are taking a road trip, be sure to look up if there is an Amazon warehouse along the way. Amazon offers free tours which are fun for the entire family.

We toured the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Phoenix, Arizona which is a sortable facility. Amazon offers free public tours at 22 of their locations in North America. They offer tours at 47 sites globally. (Update, we went in 2019; tours stopped in 2020. Amazon is still waiting to resume in-person tours but keep reading to learn about our tour and things to know.)

Teens and adults who order products on Amazon will appreciate seeing the operations firsthand. While on the tour, I saw SO MANY PRODUCTS that I’ve actually ordered on Amazon which was interesting to see. Kids will also find it interesting as it’s a huge space with lots of machines and automation.

I went with my husband, my tween, teen, and my in-laws. We all loved it. Put this on your list of things to do when they reopen. 

Tour Amazon Fulfillment Center

They have currently suspended tours. However, you can learn about our experience from going in 2019, and why you will want to plan a visit when they reopen.

When they do reopen, you will have to reserve online in advance for a scheduled day and time. They don’t allow walk-ins. You will need to:

• Tell them your name as it appears on your driver’s license or ID
• Provide your birth date

You will receive an email confirmation with your tour details. We were told to wear close-toed shoes; no sandals, flip flops, etc., and to bring our IDs. (They aren’t necessary for children.) In addition, they wanted long hair pulled back, no flowing scarves, etc.

Amazon Warehouse Tour Time

When does Amazon offer tours? At the time that Amazon was offering their free tours, they were offering tours twice a day, Monday through Friday. Some locations may offer weekend tours as well.

When you go to the Amazon free tour website, you can choose the date and time you want. When we were going, in June, we booked a month out. At that time, there were many choices of dates and times. After registering, we received an email confirmation.

While You are Waiting for Amazon to Reopen their In-Person Tours

In addition to their live, in-person tours, Amazon also offers three other types of free tours. With a strong internet connection, these are good options while their in-person tours are suspended. They are also ideal for people who live far away and who are curious.

• Live Virtual Tours – 60 minutes; schedule online 
• Video Tours – Watch whenever
• Amazon Future Engineer Tour (AFE) – 60 minutes; schedule online

Live Virtual Tours that are one hour long to replicate the experience of their in-person tours. They offer a Q&A. You register online; they are free. You have to register at least six hours in advance. Once they are filled, the option will not appear.

They also offer Video Tours which you can watch on demand.

Their Amazon Future Engineer Tour is for teachers and students to show the engineering and computer science behind their operations. This is an educational option for robotics clubs, Scouts, etc. as well. They offer a Q&A session.

What Cities Have Amazon Fulfillment Tours?

In the United States, 16 states have free Amazon tours. One Canadian province does as well. These are the Amazon locations that offer tours:

Arizona: Phoenix

California:

• San Bernardino

Colorado: Thornton

• Jacksonville

Indiana: Jeffersonville

Maryland: Baltimore

Massachusetts: Fall River

Minnesota: Shakopee

Nevada: Las Vegas

New Jersey:

• Robbinsville Township

Tennessee: Chattanooga

Utah: Salt Lake City

Washington: Seattle (Headquarters tour; you can also tour The Spheres on select Saturdays)

Wisconsin: Kenosha

Canada: Ontario

Hopefully wherever you live, there will be one close by.

How Much are Amazon Tours?

The great news is you can tour Amazon Fulfillment Centers for free! It is free and fun for the entire family. 

What is the Age Minimum for an Amazon Tour?

There is a minimum age of six years old to take the warehouse tour. On our tour, there were 24 people. In addition to our family, there was one other family with tweens and teens. Under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.

It’s fun to go with your family or friends. We went with our family of four. I also invited my in-laws to go. Whether or not you are a frequent Amazon shopper, you will be awed by the tour.

Parking at Amazon Warehouse Tour

When You Get to the Amazon Tour

At the Amazon tour we went on in Phoenix, there is a small lobby with a few chairs. We could see into the warehouse. There were two employees checking people in and verifying IDs.

How Long is the Amazon Tour?

We were in the Amazon building a total of 58 minutes, though these will vary by location and the tour guide. (Our guide seemed to try to keep it moving along.) This included checking in, sitting in the room getting instructions, going on the actual tour, returning the headsets, and being escorted back into the lobby.

Is There a Lot of Walking?

After waiting in the lobby, you will walk to a room with tables and chairs where you will hear the instructions and get the headsets.

After this period of sitting, for the remaining duration of the tour, you will be walking and standing. The actual tour, including people’s questions, took about 40 minutes.

There were stairs. One person in our group was in a wheelchair and was able to take the elevator which was right there. They also also service animals (dogs).

Taking Photos While You are on Amazon Tour

You can take pictures outside of the Amazon building as well as inside the lobby. After that, you aren’t allowed to take pictures or video.

About 3/4 into the tour, you will stop in an area which overlooks the deliveries. The tour guide will take your picture and either email or text it to you. More on this below.

It’s Amazon!

Taking an Amazon tour is an amazing opportunity. We learned the Phoenix center is the size of 28 football fields!

Going on an Amazon Fulfillment Center tour means you get to go behind the scenes with this mega operation!

They have streamlined their processes so well… truly it’s a well-oiled machine. Haven’t you ordered something from Amazon and had it in less than 24 hours? It’s truly remarkable how they do it. And you get to see it for yourself.

What Happens on Tour Amazon Fulfillment Center

• After you check in and it’s time to start the tour, the tour guides will lead you to a room.
• On your way to the room, you will be walking in the warehouse. You will see lots of products piled up in different areas. Also, you may see some employees.
• Once you are in the room, the tour guide will give you a short talk. They also talked about the benefits of working for Amazon. They really seem to care for their employees.
• The tour guide gave us a disposable water bottle to take with us. In addition, they gave us headphones with disposable ear covers.
• Then the two guides lead us through the different areas in throughout their fulfillment center. This includes the entire process from finding the products in the warehouse, to packaging, to shipping.
• There is a photo opportunity during the tour.
• We returned the headset at the end of the tour. 
• They gave everyone a reusable Amazon water bottle to keep.

Is it Loud?

The Amazon Fulfillment Tour is loud but not unbearably so. Because you have the headset, you will be able to hear the tour. The only difficult part is sometimes, it was hard to hear the questions and answers. If you are lucky enough to have a tour guide who loudly and clearly repeats the question (we didn’t) and then answers for people in the back to hear, it will be great.

Amazon Warehouse Tour Review

We loved it! It’s rare in today’s world that you can go on factory tours. Very few remain throughout the United States due to liability reasons.  To be able to go inside the mammoth Amazon center is fascinating.

Anyone who has ever ordered anything on Amazon, from the typical to the obscure, will find it interesting and will learn a lot.

It’s also likely you will leave with a sense of wonder and awe that they process so many orders each day. The scope and scale is truly unfathomable. Even though they have honed it, they continue to improve their processes.

You will get to see a lot of the fulfillment center. You are right in it, walking past employees, seeing the employee awards on the walls. In addition, you will see lots of different products as well. We saw at least five things we had purchased from Amazon!

After leaving there, I had such a higher respect for their employees, that I started doing two things differently:

• Instead of ordering from Amazon whenever I think of something, I keep a running list on my phone. Now, I place orders less frequently, and bundle them together. 
• I’m a Prime member and usually have many options to choose shipping speed. In most instances when possible, I choose the 3 – 5 day option instead of the 1 – 2 day option. 

Amazon employees work hard!

Seeing the Products in the Warehouse

It was interesting to see how they put the products in areas seemingly-randomly throughout the warehouse and how automated it is so that everyone can easily find the items. They place and store items in a random order which they said is more effective for them than grouping all the same types of products together.

So many products

We were able to walk to one section lined with yellow containers — “pods” — each packed with unrelated products. These pods contained thousands of different types of products.

The guide explained how the employees, the “pickers,” found the products to fulfill the orders using bar code scanners. There were random Lego sets next to plastic forks next to rubber gloves and a hammer.

We saw a yo-yo next to gardening shears and a stationery set.

It was interesting to see how this random system worked for them. At first, I thought they were people’s orders because it was so random.

But think about what you order on Amazon. Oftentimes, it’s very different types of things!

Packing area

From there, we went to the packing area. They showed us how the products are put into boxes and envelopes and how they seal them with tape. They had automatic label and tape dispensers. We were also able to see where the shipments come in off the delivery trucks.

Before we got to the shipping sorting section, we were able to look down at the area where the deliveries came in.

Can you imagine all the products Amazon receives each day? There are thousands that come in and thousands they send out.

Our tour guide said they try to reuse the boxes that they receive deliveries in. The rest get recycled. At the Phoenix Fulfillment Center, we were a story higher looking down on this area. This is where we were able to get our picture taken.

Photos Inside the Amazon Tour

You have a chance to stand alone or with whomever you came with to get your picture taken with the center in the background. They gave us some props to hold, including Amazon boxes. We posed with the deliveries down below.

The staff below was on a break or a shift change. I’m thinking they arrange the tours around this to give the employees some privacy.

After taking our picture, they asked for a cell phone number and texted us the picture. You can have it emailed if you prefer. It seemed like everyone in our group got their picture taken. It went quickly. While we we were waiting, we were busy looking out at everything.

This section was a little rushed — it is Amazon, after all! — so we didn’t feel we could ask for a second picture of just our kids.

Amazon Fulfillment Center Phoenix tours

They had different areas for packages with expedited shipping versus packages with slower shipping. It was amazing to see the different conveyor belts and areas for packages that were sending out in one day, via Amazon Prime, and for slower shipping.

We loved visiting the Phoenix warehouse and look forward to touring other fulfillment centers in other locations… even if it was a Sortable warehouse again. No matter which Amazon location you visit, you will surely learn something new and see new things.

What We Liked Seeing at the Sortable Warehouse

• It’s free!
• It was fascinating to be inside.
• They really seem to value their employees. It made me wish I lived closer to an Amazon center to work there.
• There is a fun Amazon sign to take a picture of when you enter or exit.
• They handed out headphones — not ear buds — which were comfortable. In addition, they gave us disposable ear covers to put over them.
• They seemed to schedule the tour when there were less staff around… we liked that. It helped give their staff more privacy.
• We were all blown away by the way they sorted things randomly.
• At the end of the tour, they gave everyone a reusable Amazon water bottle.

Downsides to Amazon Tour

• It felt a little rushed. I’m sure all of us could have thought of 10 questions and lingered around each step in the process.
• Hit or miss on tour guide.
• Can be difficult to hear questions.

Tour Amazon Warehouse Options: Sortable, Non-Sortable, Robotics

Depending on which location you visit, you will see different things. There are three types of warehouses to tour Amazon Fulfillment Center.

Sortable facility

The Phoenix Fulfillment Center is considered a sortable facility. This is where they have everything from pin cushions and bags of candy to blenders, pillows, backpacks, planters, and poker sets.

Non-sortable facility

These fulfillment centers ship larger items such as furniture, rugs, etc. These Amazon facilities ship large items and won’t have all the smaller items we saw on our tour. 

Robotics sortable facility

These centers ship products smaller than a typical-sized microwave. Robots work alongside the workers to ship products. You can find out which center you will be visiting when you click on the city on Amazon’s website.

• When you scroll down, go past the FAQ section, to the Site Information section.
• You will see 01.
• It will say 01 The Fulfillment Center.
• Read the paragraph to learn if that location is Sortable, Non-Sortable, or Robotics sortable. 

Personally, I think going on any Amazon tour would be amazing. If you will be near a facility that offers them, schedule a tour! I would see the Sortable tour again, even in Phoenix, because it was that good. When traveling elsewhere, I would make it a priority to schedule a tour as well. 

Tour Amazon Fulfillment Center Field Trips

It would make for an excellent field trip. It would be an ideal outing for Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, and other organizations and clubs. Amazon makes special accommodations if you have a group of 20 or more. Adults and children will enjoy it.

Tour Amazon Headquarters in Seattle

Oh how we wanted to do this when we were in Seattle in 2019! Unfortunately, the times didn’t work out for us because we needed to get to the airport. You can tour Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Amazon is Seattle’s largest private employer.

They are also temporarily closed. However, when they reopen, you can take an Amazon headquarters tour.

Two Saturdays a month, they open The Spheres to the public. When they open again, this is surely something to put on your Seattle to do list. Seattle Spheres is their outdoor botanical wonderland. They also have a greenhouse and so much more.

Amazon is a Great Place to Work

Something we learned at the Amazon Fulfillment Center tour is that employees definitely walk and stand a lot. It also seems like it would go quickly because of all there must be to do. You can tell they treat their employees well.

We walked past an employee break room which was large and comfortable-looking. Amazon seems to be an incredible company. It’s up to each household to balance it with shopping locally. They give back to their communities as well.

We were happy were were able to see everything from the shipments coming in, the areas the products were stowed in, the packing section which included boxing, labeling, and taping, and the shipping out section.

It was fun to part of the Amazon excitement. We appreciated all that goes into their operations. As much as we try to buy local, you can’t beat the convenience of Amazon. It was incredible to be inside their operation and to try to fathom how they can get all these products to their customers overnight or in days.

We felt “part of the group” being Amazon Prime subscribers.

It’s a really great tour for families. Most companies do not offer tours. Kids will really enjoy seeing behind-the-scenes. See other factory tours we were on in Denver, CO and Milwaukee, WI .

Tour Amazon Fulfillment Center warehouse

See for yourself how Amazon fulfills millions of orders each day!

It’s fascinating they open up their world to the public, especially in times when so many companies do not. 

They train and offer steady employment for area residents and should be viewed as an asset to the areas in which they are located.

Please note, we visited the Amazon Fulfillment Cente r in Phoenix, AZ in June 2019. Currently, their tours are suspended. Hopefully, you can take one of the Amazon Fulfillment Centers tours next year. There may even be one in the area in which you live. It’s truly a wonderful free tour.

In the meantime, as I stated above, you can take advantage of the free Amazon tour from home. They offer Live Virtual Tours that last an hour. You need to register in advance online, and they are free. While it doesn’t match the experience of actually being in the fulfillment center, it is still definitely interesting to see.

They also offer prerecorded Video Tours that you can click on and watch whenever it’s convenient.

See which products are made in America . Note to Amazon: We need a Made in USA filter!

What Happens to Your Inventory Inside an Amazon Warehouse?

After haggling endlessly with your supplier from China, you finally have your products ready to ship to one of Amazon’s hundreds of warehouses. As an ecommerce company, it’s completely normal to have no visibility on your products before they reach your customer’s doorstep.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what your inventory goes through in an Amazon warehouse before they are delivered to your buyers. We can finally learn and have some visibility into our products before they’re shipped out.

Spoiler alert: It involves overpriced robots and overworked associates.

The Critical Feature: Amazon FBA

A look at the numbers of fba, from your supplier to an amazon warehouse: 3pl vs direct shipping, how your products are approved for storage, how amazon makes sure your products are not stolen, how your product reaches your customer’s doorstep.

Customers can't shop directly from an Amazon warehouse, but there are hundreds of Amazon fulfillment centers that make delivery faster. As more third-party sellers came into the picture, Uncle Jeff thought it was a good idea to make things easier for them in terms of fulfilling orders.

When Amazon first started seeing more third-party sellers come into the picture, Uncle Jeff thought it was a good idea to make things easier for them in terms of fulfilling orders.

Thus, in September of 2006, FBA was launched, and it was a godsend for ecommerce entrepreneurs. With FBA in place, it makes it easier for third-party sellers to ship out orders to their customers. Of course, there are FBA fees involved, but they are generally worth the convenience.

Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men in the world, so it will come as no surprise that his company’s real estate is astounding.

As of 2023, there are more than 175 fulfillment centers, the majority of which are located in North America and Europe. These warehouses have a total square footage of approximately 150 million — and these are just the fulfillment centers. There are different types of Amazon warehouses distributed in various locations dedicated to other purposes like sorting and receiving, and there are also specialty centers.

The number even increased during the pandemic when Amazon was doubling down on building more warehouses to meet the demand. Post-pandemic, a lot of these warehouses were closed until the launch of the Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) which provides a cheaper long-term storage solution to third-party sellers.

If you’re ever in the United States or Canada, you can sign up for an actual tour inside an Amazon fulfillment center in 23 locations. There are also public tours available in Europe .

As of July 2020, Amazon has around 1 million employees, but the number will only get bigger during holidays and other peak seasons because of additional demand.

Dave has actually worked for Amazon for a week, and it’s interesting to see a successful third-party seller experience what it’s like to be an Amazon associate.

In terms of revenue, the ecommerce giant raked in USD280.5 billion in 2019, which made its founder so rich that his money is greater than the number of brain cells in an average human.

Let’s say you’re importing from China . Your supplier has already shipped your products and the ship carrying it has arrived in one of the ports in the United States. What happens then?

You can opt to hire a third-party logistics company to handle your inventory or you can ship directly to Amazon.

Some sellers even go the extra mile of having their products sent to their own warehouses (or sometimes houses) to personally inspect them. It goes without saying that this technique will incur additional, and sometimes unnecessary, costs. But some sellers do this to make sure that their products are in pristine condition.

You might want to try this out especially if you’re still new to the industry. New sellers often start out with a few units before finally shipping full containers to Amazon.

There are pros and cons whether you employ 3PLs or ship the products directly to Amazon. In choosing between the two, you have to consider the following:

• The costs involved
• Risk of not being able to inspect your inventory first
• Transit time

If you ship directly to Amazon, you won’t be able to catch problems before the inventory arrives in the fulfillment center. However, it will reduce transit time and touch points, making the chance of damaging the items lower.

When your package arrives in the fulfillment center, it undergoes a rigorous process before it is approved for storage. Well, at least that’s what they expect us to believe.

In reality, however, Amazon associates are instructed to put everything on the shelf that doesn’t have a hole in the packaging that’s greater than the size of a golf ball.

However, it’s still best to be careful with packaging. To avoid delays, you need to make sure that your products are compliant with Amazon’s standards, especially in terms of packaging and labeling.

Another important thing to make sure of is that what you're trying to store is not one of Amazon’s restricted products .

Package Inspection and Scanning

You have to make sure that each item is packaged properly and there are different rules regarding packaging. For example, if you’re using a perforated box, it should pass a three-foot drop test. If it fails the test, it should be placed in a polybag with a suffocation warning label.

At the fulfillment center, an Amazon associate inspects your package to make sure that it arrived in good condition, after which, he or she scans the shipping label to make sure that it’s in the correct center.

Speaking of labels, Amazon has specific requirements for labelling products that arrive in its fulfillment centers. For example, products that expire must have the expiration date printed both on the master carton (and must be in 36-point font or larger) and on the individual units.  Suffocation warnings are also required for polybags whose openings are 5 inches or more in length when measured flat.

To reduce delay, make sure to stick labels and barcodes on flat surfaces that will not be damaged when the box is opened.

Product Inspection

After scanning the label in the main package, an associate opens the box to inspect the individual items. At this stage, the associate determines whether

• Each unit has one scannable barcode (having multiple will result to dely) and
• Whether there is a need for additional packaging to avoid damages during delivery

Once approved, the items are then delivered to the receiving station where another associate performs a six-sided check, making sure that no items are damaged. If everything looks good, the same associate performs a title verification, after which the inventory is considered officially received.

Product Storing

How and where your inventory is stored inside an Amazon fulfillment center depends on its type.

For example, to avoid shelf wear, media products are stored in library-type shelves in vertical spine out positions with loose stacking. High-value goods may be stored in a more secure area.

What Happens if Amazon Loses Your Products

When Amazon loses your products, the first thing it will do is to try and find them. How long will this take? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no definite answer here. For some, it takes a few weeks. For others, the seller could be waiting for months.

If Amazon decides to give up on the investigation, they will reimburse you for the lost goods minus the Amazon fees.

But here’s the catch. If after reimbursement, they eventually locate the missing items, Amazon will get back what they paid you, usually charging it to your next deposit.

You might be wondering at this point how Amazon prevents theft inside the warehouse. With millions of products on the shelves and hundreds of associates on the ground, people may be too busy to notice if an item or two is stealthily removed from the pods.

This is where the security features come in. Every Amazon associate that enters the warehouse goes through a security check akin to those in airports. Phones are strictly prohibited, and each employee is thoroughly checked for any stolen items they might smuggle out of the warehouse.

There are still times, however, when workers try to steal from Amazon. Some of them got caught, and in an attempt to deter the behavior, the company had resulted in Orwellian tactics that added to issues of employee dissatisfaction with the working conditions.

After being received and stored in the Amazon warehouse, the listing goes live or the number of items are updated. Hopefully, someone will click on your listing and buy your products.

But what exactly happens when a customer clicks on the Buy button?

Here’s when those orange robots come in. If you examine the floors of an Amazon fulfillment center closely, you will see a lot of QR codes. This is how robots move around the warehouse and deliver the appropriate pods to the associates.In 2012, Amazon bought the robotics company Kiva and renamed it to Amazon Robotics . This is the company responsible for making the machines that make fulfillment faster and more efficient.

Through these Kiva robots, Amazon associates don’t need to run across the warehouse, which can be as large as a few football fields. These small robots are usually found in warehouses that store standard-sized items. For warehouses that store oversized packages which contain things such as bathtubs and kayaks, bigger robots do the picking and transferring.

The advanced technology allows machines to determine the appropriate pods and deliver them to an associate known as the picker.

Think of a picker like a personal shopper who picks out the specific items you ordered from the pods the Kiva robots deliver. The items are then placed in a tote, those yellow-colored boxes that are ubiquitous in Amazon warehouses.

The items are then delivered to the pack station. Here, Amazon does a great job in ensuring efficiency because they take away all the guesswork since computers know exactly the ideal box the goods should be shipped in as well as the exact amount of tape needed to seal the boxes.

Throughout all these processes, miles’ worth of conveyor belts are utilized to get the products from one place to another. The labels are also pasted on the boxes within seconds. And because employees’ movements and productivity are constantly monitored, Amazon deliveries are getting faster.

After the packages are ready, they are then delivered to the customers. This can be done in various ways.

Amazon partners with third-party logistics including the USPS, but it’s slowly building its own battalion of delivery vehicles to further lessen the costs.

In 2015, for example, Amazon Flex was launched. This allowed individuals who have a driver’s license and are over 21 years old to make some deliveries. Amazon also has about 80 aircraft and is procuring more.

You can also apply to be an Amazon Delivery Service Partner . For as low as $10,000, you can partner with Amazon to help out with logistics. You’ll be like UPS that partners with the ecommerce giant.

You might have even heard of drones being tested for deliveries. It seems like Uncle Jeff and his team will stop at nothing to get your orders shipped to your doorstep as soon as you click Buy.

Amazon has been creating a system that allows third-party sellers to store, fulfill, and deliver their products to customers in the most efficient way possible. It’s safe to say that Amazon FBA has revolutionized the way ecommerce businesses operate.

Your inventory goes through so much inside an Amazon warehouse. Before it reaches your customer, it has to go through rigorous inspections, long conveyor belts, and multiple gloved hands.

It’s no secret that Amazon is leading the ecommerce industry. Its technology is unparalleled and we have yet to see more of what it has to offer.

Have you been on a tour in one of the fulfillment centers? We’d love to hear what it was like for you.

Christine Gerzon

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Dear Christine， Thanks for your great article of the introduction in detail. Recently I met a problem related to this. May I have your kindly opinion? The question is,I sent some cattons of products to the warehouse of Amazon(FBA) by mistake: the listing is A ,the FBA box labels are A, but the products are B,the labels on the product are also B,so there are the mistakes. Now it seems the cargo is under checking in, I have already cancelled the shipment but I am afraid the wrong items may be received in stock and delivered to customers by mistake. I opened cases about this on Amazon but did not get clear answers. Please kindly advise what can I do? Thanks.

Normally Amazon will rectify it and check in product B. If they check it in as Product A it means theyve relabeled your items and you’ll want to recall the inventory though. Happens all the time, for better or worse.

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Inside the Amazon Warehouse Where Humans and Machines Become One

They call me the Master of Robots—or at least they should. I grab a flat package, hold its barcode under a red laser dot, and place it on a small orange robot. I hit a button to my left and off zips the robot to do my bidding, bound for one of more than 300 rectangular holes in the floor corresponding to zip codes. When it gets there, the bot engages its own little conveyor belt, sliding the package off its back and down a chute to the floor below, where it can be loaded onto a truck for delivery.

This is not an experimental system in a robotics lab. These are real packages going to real people with the help of real robots in Amazon’s sorting facility of tomorrow, not far from the Denver airport. With any luck, my robot friend and I just successfully shipped a parcel to someone in Colorado. If not—well, blame the technology, not the user.

Seen from above, the scale of the system is dizzying. My robot, a stubby mobile slab known as a drive (or more formally and mythically, Pegasus), is just one of hundreds of its kind swarming a 125,000-square-foot “field” pockmarked with chutes. It’s a symphony of electric whirring, with robots pausing for one another at intersections and delivering their packages to the slides. After each “mission,” they form a neat queue at stations along the periphery, waiting for humans to scan a new package, load the robots once again, and dispatch them on another mission.

You don’t have to look far to see what a massive shake-up this is for the unseen logistics behind your Amazon deliveries. On the other side of the building are four humans doing things the old way, standing at the base of a slide flowing with packages. Frenetically they pick up the parcels, eyeball the label on each, and walk them over to the appropriate chutes. At the bottom of the chutes, yet more humans grab the packages and stack them on pallets for delivery. It’s all extremely labor-intensive and, in a word, chaotic.

Amazon needs this robotic system to supercharge its order fulfillment process and make same-day delivery a widespread reality. But the implications strike at the very nature of modern labor: Humans and robots are fusing into a cohesive workforce, one that promises to harness the unique skills of both parties. With that comes a familiar anxiety—an existential conundrum, even—that as robots grow ever more advanced, they’re bound to push more and more people out of work. But in reality, it’s not nearly as simple as all that.

If only the Luddites could see us fulfilling online orders now.

This Colorado warehouse is, in a way, a monument to robots. It’s not one of the Amazon fulfillment centers you’ve probably heard of by now, in which humans grab all the items in your order and pack them into a box. This is a sorting facility, which receives all those boxes and puts them on trucks to your neighborhood. The distinction is important: These squat, wheeled drives aren’t tasked with finely manipulating your shampoos and books and T-shirts. They’re mules.

Reece Rogers

David Kushner

David Gilbert

Emily Mullin

Very, very finely tuned mules. A system in the cloud, sort of like air traffic control, coordinates the route of every robot across the floor, with an eye to potential interference from other drives on other routes. That coordination system also decides when a robot should peel off to the side and dock in a charger, and when it should return to work. Sometimes the route selection can get even more complicated, because particularly populous zip codes have more than one chute, so the system needs to factor in traffic patterns in deciding which portal a robot should visit.

“It's basically a very large sudoku puzzle,” says Ryan Clarke, senior manager of Special Amazon Robotics Technology Applications. “You want every column and every row to have an equal amount of drops. How do we make sure that every row and every column looks exactly equal to each other?” The end goal is to minimize congestion through an even distribution of traffic across the field. So on top of tweaking the robots’ routes, the system can actually switch the chute assignments around to match demand, so that neither the robots nor the human sorters they work with hit any bottlenecks.

To map out all this madness, Amazon runs simulations. Those in turn inform how the drives themselves should be performing. What’s the optimal speed? What’s the optimal acceleration and deceleration, given you want the deliveries to be as efficient as possible while keeping the robots from smashing into one another? After all, a bump might toss a package to the ground, which other robots would spot with their vision sensors and route around, adding yet another layer of complexity to the field. (The robots have sensors on either end of their conveyor belt, by the way, so if a package starts to slip off the side, the belt automatically engages to pull the package back on.)

Amazon runs complex simulations to coordinate the robots on the field.

The temptation might be to get these machines moving as quick as possible. “But it would be like having a Ferrari in downtown San Francisco—all you're doing is stop and go,” says Clarke. “We looked at tuning it to many different parameters and found that more speed and more acceleration actually had a reverse effect. They were just bumping into each other and causing more pileups.”

Ready for more complexity? Amazon had to tweak the built space itself to keep the machines happy. Humans doing things the old way on the other side of the building, for instance, enjoy basking in the photons that pour through skylights. Above the robots’ field, though, the skylights are covered, because the glare might throw off the machines’ sensors. To navigate, they’re using a camera on their bellies that reads QR codes on the ground. Even the air-conditioning units hanging from the roof are modified. On the human side, they blow air straight downward, but above the robots they blow out to the side, because gusts of air could blow light packages off the machines’ conveyor belts.

Worse yet, precarious packages like liquids could send the system into chaos. So although the system is automated, humans still monitor the robots on flatscreens below the field, where the packages come down the chutes, and respond to crises. “Think about if I had a package and it had a gallon of paint in it, and that gallon of paint was damaged and it leaked down one of these chutes,” says Steve McDonnell, general manager of the sorting center. “Within minutes I'm able to shut that chute off, redirect drives to another chute, and I'm done.”

The key here is flexibility—not a word that first comes to mind when you think of robots. Flexibility in the robots’ pathways, in their destinations, in the number of robots on the field at once. You might, for example, think the more machines out there, the better. Amazon could deploy up to 800 drives simultaneously, but that could jam up the floor like traffic in a city. Instead, they’re typically operating 400 or 500, with others parked off to the side and waiting to be circulated in.

Beyond coordinating the robots themselves, there’s the question of how to make them good coworkers for the human employees. The humans’ job is to place packages in 6-foot-tall boxes below the field, taking care not to toss in heavy packages first. To make that work manageable, the robots have to distribute packages between the multiple chutes for a particular zip code, so a given chute doesn’t overflow. At the same time, the system considers how to best group packages downstairs by their departure time, so workers don’t have to run around hunting for them.

“The interaction between the associate and the drives is almost like a 3D chess set,” says McDonnell, “because you can optimize the drive field, but then you can make the associate's job harder below the field.”

Across the field from the human workers distributing packages to the drives, a prototype robotic arm, named Robin, sits at the end of a conveyor belt. Its “hand” is a vacuum manipulator, designed to snag boxes and flat packages.

This robotic arm is a test of what it might look like to further automate the work of shuffling packages around. The idea is that the conveyor will deliver packages to the arm, which would then load the drives. “We're going to feed it a little bit differently than we do with humans,” says Rob Whitten, senior technical program manager. “We're not going to just give it a pile coming down a chute—we're going to kind of toss it softballs. We're going to give it a little more structure so it can handle it.” For parcels it can't manipulate, like if they're too heavy or weirdly shaped, humans would step in to help.

As I walk down the line of human robot-loaders, I come across a worker who has set aside a broken box, which has spilled out bottles and other entrails. That uniquely capable human could do two things here: use his problem-solving skills to say, "Something is wrong, I need to set these aside," and then manipulate those objects with exceedingly fine motor skills.

This robot arm has neither problem-solving prowess nor fine motor skills. Imagine if clear laundry liquid had broken inside a package and soaked the bottom of the box. A human might smell the detergent or feel its stickiness before they see it. A robot arm relying on sight alone would miss the problem, loading the package on a drive robot that then snail-slimes the floor of the field.

Even if they had some semblance of judgment, robots are still awful at manipulating complex objects like bottles. That’s why Amazon is keeping it simple here, with a suction arm meant to stick to flat surfaces, as opposed to an analog of the human hand . For quite some time, humans will need to (nearly) literally hold these robots’ hands.

The bottom line is this: We humans have to adapt to the machines as much as the machines have to adapt to us. Our careers depend on it.

Amazon runs simulations to figure out how to keep their human workers comfortable when loading robots with packages. This includes their range of movement from an ergonomics standpoint and their safety. Or such questions as how best for a human to grab a parcel, scan it, place it, and reach over to hit the button that sends the robot on its way. “There's an art to making it feel seamless between what the robot is doing and what the humans are doing,” says Brad Porter, VP of robotics at Amazon.

It’s the kind of dynamic environment that’s perfect for the development of Amazon’s next iteration of its system. The company is working on a new modular robot called Xanthus with different attachments, say to hold containers instead of using a conveyor belt. This machine will in a sense bridge the divide between fulfillment centers, where humans are loading products into boxes by hand, and sorting centers, where they’re mostly working with those assembled boxes.

Amazon's new modular Xanthus robot can be outfitted with attachments that allow it to carry different kinds of cargo.

“You can see how combined with maybe the addition of a sensor platform, you could have an autonomous drive that's driving totes around,” says Porter. But you can also take that same thin sled and replace the tote-carrying unit with a conveyor top and deploy it in the sorting center.

Herein lies Amazon’s huge advantage: It’s got the funds and the talent to develop robots in-house, tailoring each to solve problems specific to Amazon. Other warehouses are starting to go robotic, but they’re working with other companies’ machines. For instance, Boston Dynamics—maker of the hypnotically impressive SpotMini and Atlas —will soon offer a box-lifting robot called Handle . But it’s a generalist machine, not developed exclusively for one client.

Amazon, on the other hand, can iterate on a robot until it's perfectly adapted for a specific task. “They're building it for themselves, and they're building it for their environment and circumstances,” says John Santagate, research director of service robotics at IDC, which does market research. “It's hard to build any one product that suits all of it.”

And every worker they hire into a machine-facing role is doing something no other human has ever done before—lower-level workers in this facility have been promoted to help oversee the massive system whirring around them, as well as the humans intimately integrated with it. “The fully automated or highly automated fulfillment center isn't a North Star we're trying to hit,” says Porter. “Do we see additional levels of automation, at higher and higher levels? Yeah, I think that will increase as the capabilities of our systems increase.”

Here’s the big question, though. Is this kind of automation bound to replace human jobs entirely, or replace parts of those jobs? “Most of the research seems to suggest that the direction that automation is moving in is the displacement of skills, not jobs,” says R. David Edelman, formerly President Obama's special assistant on the digital economy, and now the director of MIT’s Project on Technology, Economy, and National Security. “That suggests those individuals can, by Amazon, be reskilled or leverage other skills they already have in the same job.”

These days, industries that are short human labor need automation to survive. Consumers still want fresh produce, but California’s farms are facing a labor shortage of 20 percent and are increasingly turning to agricultural robotics . Amazon’s business is booming, yet America is enjoying historically low unemployment, so laborers have lots of options for work. “The demand on that company is increasing, but the availability of resources to fill that demand isn't necessarily increasing,” says Santagate. “In fact it's probably contracting.” Robots are filling the void.

Here in this sorting center of tomorrow, I walk along the edge of the field and hear the morning break for humans, called out on loudspeakers. The drive robots continue to shuffle around for a few minutes, with their incessant electric white noise, until suddenly the place falls almost silent. Having delivered their packages to chutes, the robots have run out of work. They park off to the side of the field, some of them in charging stations. Only when the loudspeakers call the end of break do the machines start up again, ready for their humans to feed them more packages.

If only the Luddites could see our codependency now.

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‘They are breaking the law’: inside Amazon’s bid to stall a union drive

Retailer doing ‘whatever it takes’ to halt organizing at warehouse in Moreno Valley, California, workers say, as Amazon faces unfair labor practice charges

Facing an insurgent campaign which threatened to unleash a wave of unionization across its vast workforce, Amazon stands accused of reaching for dirty tricks.

Workers who tried to organize inside its warehouses claim the technology giant orchestrated an illegal counteroffensive, using scare tactics and spreading misconceptions.

Nearly two years have passed since workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to form its first US warehouse union . As the Amazon Labor Union took its battle nationwide, the company scrambled to ensure it did not suffer the same crushing blows.

The world’s largest retailer is “going to do whatever it takes”, Nannette Plascencia, who has worked for nine years at its ONT8 fulfillment center in Moreno Valley, California, said in an interview, “even knowing they are breaking the law”.

Photographs shared with the Guardian reveal how Amazon pushed back against an organizing drive inside ONT8 with anti-union messaging. “Unions run their business with your money,” and deduct dues “regularly” from paychecks, employees were warned on TV screens installed in the warehouse.

These tactics are at the heart of an operation by Amazon which is the subject of unfair labor practice charges, leaving battles to unionize across Amazon in limbo while both sides wait for months on actions and rulings by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency.

Amazon workers in Moreno Valley filed for a union vote in October 2022, only to pull the election petition after significant opposition from the company. Those who led the campaign allege managers violated labor laws to halt it in its tracks.

They cried foul to the NLRB, which last March consolidated their cases into a formal complaint seen by the Guardian. Managers at ONT8 “directed employees not to discuss the union on the work floor during work time”, but permitted discussion of other, non-work subjects, according to the complaint, which also alleges the company held “‘captive audience’ meetings with workers.

The charges will be heard before an administrative law judge in August. Amazon denies all allegations of labor law violations at ONT8.

“A majority of the charges brought forth by the ALU have already been withdrawn or dismissed by the NLRB,” Eileen Hards, an Amazon spokeswoman, said. “We disagree with these allegations and look forward to showing that as the legal process continues.”

When workers at ONT8 first filed for a union election, Amazon quickly got to work, according to Plascencia, who described how operational managers from across the company descended on the warehouse for over a year.

Flyers were posted in the breakroom and employees summoned to meetings – referred to as “protect your privacy” meetings by Amazon – where external anti-union consultants are frequently said to have assisted.

“They scanned all our badges, took us in groups of 30, and there would be a TV monitor on, with slides … and a man in front we never saw before,” said Plascencia. “We were told they were there to talk to us about union authorization cards and what we should know about them.

“They would say, ‘Be careful, because this is a government form you are signing,’ and basically they would go on about how it’s not good to unionize. They would tell us we would lose all our benefits and start all over again.”

Plascencia said the operational managers regularly interrogated workers at ONT8, including herself, about unions and their union support.

It was possible, employees were warned, that collective bargaining by a union could leave them with “less than you have now”. “Whatever the result, unions will charge you for representation,” according to one slide titled “Get the facts”.

“The truth is that with a union, there are no guarantees,” claimed one post on Amazon’s internal online board for employees.

The messaging instilled fear, anxiety and disrupted their union organizing efforts, Plascencia claimed – to the point where workers would berate her, and other organizers, over claims they would cause them to lose their pay and benefits.

“Managers would come up to us and say we’re not allowed to talk about unions. I personally experienced this,” she said. “A manager actually came up to me and some of my co-workers and said we’re not allowed to talk about unions on the shop floor.

“I pushed back and they said something as delicate as ‘unions … could upset somebody, you can’t talk about things like that’.”

Amazon was particularly vehement in its warnings against authorization cards, which authorize unions to negotiate employment terms on a worker’s behalf. “A third party may use it to call or text you or visit you at home,” it claimed on one flyer. Such messaging made employees “very hesitant about signing”, Plascencia said. “They believed that this was coming from the company they worked for, and that the company they worked for would not lie, so it has to be true.

“We had to try to break it down to people that yes, the corporation will lie to you, because they don’t care. It’s all about them controlling and retaining their power, so they’re going to say what they need to say to scare us.”

Amazon’s efforts upended union organizing efforts at ONT8, as concern over its claims became embedded among rank-and-file workers. “That was really hard,” said Plascencia. “It put a big dent in our movement.”

The company does not want its workers to have the “power they deserve” in its warehouses, she claimed. “They don’t want us seated at the table with them, when deciding important things for us and our families.

“They want to decide on their own without worker involvement, so they’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure they accomplish that, even knowing they are breaking the law.”

The events in Moreno Valley are not unique. Complaints over Amazon’s conduct during union elections that fell short at warehouses in Albany, New York, and Bessemer, Alabama, are still awaiting review at the NLRB.

At Amazon’s air hub in Kentucky, workers who have been organizing for over a year have also filed unfair labor practice charges. “The allegations in this complaint are without merit,” said Hards, the Amazon spokeswoman. “Our solicitation policy is lawful, and we will continue to defend our position as the legal process continues.”

Across the US, the wider fight to organize within Amazon – the country’s second-largest private employer – has lost momentum. Even at JFK8, in Staten Island – which remains its only US warehouse to unionize – the company has yet to have started bargaining with the union on a first contract.

Amazon continues to deny the election results, despite the NLRB certifying the results after its objections were dismissed. “We strongly disagree with the outcome of the election,” said Hards. The company is pushing for a review of a regional director’s decision which dismissed its objections to the election.

The process is slow. In Moreno Valley, workers at ONT8 filed again for a union election last September, only to again pull the petition while waiting on the NLRB to review and respond to the unfair labor practice charges they have filed against Amazon.

As its conduct comes under scrutiny at the NLRB amid labor law violation proceedings, earlier this year Amazon argued the agency is unconstitutional, joining the likes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Trader Joe’s to question the legality of its structure.

Amazon’s leaders “don’t care” about breaking the rules, Plascencia claimed. “It’s not a big deal to them because it’s not going to come around until years later.”

The first campaign at ONT8 was in 2022, she noted, and the challenge over Amazon’s response is “barely coming around now”.

Seth Goldstein, a labor attorney representing the Amazon Labor Union, said: “The National Labor Relations Act’s toothless enforcement and remedies allow employers to exploit endless due process rights, delaying bargaining for years, as seen at JFK8, where workers are left disillusioned or forced out, and union organizers are targeted and fired.

“It’s outrageous that unions must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to force employers to bargain a contract. Fundamental labor reform is urgently needed to empower workers and hold employers accountable for their bargaining obligations.”

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