COLORADANS GET A BOOST IN AMAZON HOURLY PAY RAISE
Online retailer raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour for all employees
Amazon, which has recently added more than 2,000 workers in Colorado, announced Tuesday it would lift its lowest pay rate to $15 an hour starting Nov. 1.
The online retailer, based in Seattle, said the higher minimum wage would apply to all workers — full time, part time and temporary — and to employees of its Whole Foods Market subsidiary.
It’s more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, and nearly 50 percent higher than Colorado’s current minimum wage of $10.20 an hour.
“We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, said in a blog post. “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.”
Amazon has come under increasing fire for having workers dependent on public assistance, for the big pay gap between its top executives and rankandfile workers, and for difficult working conditions at its distribution centers.
Progressive groups and advocates such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have been among the most vocal critics.
“People who work for a living should be able to earn a living” the Action Center on Race and the Economy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. “Amazon has a long way to go to make sure its workers have a fair return on work, have safe working conditions, adequate health care, are
valued, and can provide for their families.”
But the timing of the hike, just as Amazon gears up to hire more than 100,000 additional workers to handle a crush of holiday orders, suggests a strong business motivation.
“Although the hike is partly political, there is also an economic imperative to increase wages,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said in a note. “Without a rise in wages, Amazon would be placing itself at a disadvantage in the labor market.”
In 2015, Amazon opened a sorting center just south of Denver International Airport with about 250 workers. Last year, Amazon opened a largeitem fulfillment center along Interstate 70 in Aurora with 1,000 workers.
This past summer, in its biggest hiring wave yet in Colorado, Amazon sought another 1,500 workers to staff a robotic fulfillment center in Thornton. The starting wage for the new fulfillment center jobs in Aurora and Thornton was $12.50 an hour.
Amazon finalized its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in August of last year, and employees at the grocery chain’s 19 stores in Colorado will also get a bump in minimum pay. Additionally, Amazon has another 250 engineers in offices spread across Denver, Broomfield and Boulder, who already make much more than $15 an hour.
Colorado voters in 2016 passed Amendment 70, which lifted the state minimum wage from $8.31 an hour to $12 an hour by 2020. Amazon’s move is expected to put pressure on brickandmortar retailers to boost wages faster.
Target a year ago committed to raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour by the end of 2020, and in January, Walmart said it would lift wages to $9 an hour.
“That may be factoring in on Amazon’s decision. They can’t afford to not get the orders processed,” said Rich Jones, director of policy and research at the Bell Policy Center, one of several groups behind the push to raise Colorado’s minimum wage to $12 an hour.
When Amendment 70 was being debated, there was a competing push to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour. Jones said that seemed too big a hike for rural parts of the state to handle.
Still, a Front Range worker will struggle to stay ahead, given how much housing costs have risen. But households with two earners could achieve selfsufficiency on that wage, Jones said.