Warehouse Worker Organizing

Large box retailers like Wal-Mart rely upon a handful of distribution centers which consist of massive warehousing facilities. These centers are located at major seaports or transportation crossroads. The largest single concentration is in the Inland Empire (East of Los Angeles), where a majority of the 100,000 low wage workers are employed by 270 temp agencies to work in hundreds of warehouses. An estimated 40% of all seaborne imports into the US are trucked from Los Angeles ports to be distributed through these warehouses.

The growing reliance of these warehouses on temp agencies is notable in the quote from one worker: “When I started, 15 years ago, I worked for the company (the supermarket chain Pick-n-Save) directly. There were no temp agencies; the company hired you, put you on 90-day probation, and if you passed, you were a regular employee. But around eight or 10 years ago, they started moving to temp agencies. Now, they give you five-days-a-week work—or less”(from American Prospect). As a result, hundreds of thousands of workers are denied the right to organize unions or to secure other basic worker rights and their pay is at rock bottom. A survey of a sample of the 150,000 warehouse workers from the Chicago, another huge distribution center, found that 63% earned wages below the Federal poverty line. The two largest concentrations of warehouses in the US are the Inland Empire and Chicago and are the focus of emerging organizing campaigns to educate workers and help them organize.