Amazon tier 1 pay raise 2022

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon said Wednesday it’s raising its average starting pay for frontline workers from $18 to $19 a hour, a boost that could help it attract more employees in a tight labor market as the holiday season approaches.

Amazon said that beginning in October, warehouse and transportation workers would earn between $16 and $26 an hour, depending on their position and location in the U.S.

The minimum wage at the Seattle-based e-commerce company, which employed roughly 1.5 million workers as of the end of June, will remain $15 an hour.

The pay raise follows an announcement from Amazon that it will hold a Prime-Day like holiday shopping event in October, the first time it is having a major sales drive twice in a year, following its Prime Day deals event in July.

Target and Walmart also said last week they will offer holiday deals or gift returns in October to accommodate cash-strapped consumers expected to shop earlier and spread out their spending for the holiday season.

The company is also offering the pay bump amid a growing unionization movement inside its warehouses, driven by worker complaints over pay and working conditions.

Next month, Amazon warehouse workers in upstate New York will vote in a union election following an organizing drive spearheaded by the Amazon Labor Union, the grassroots group of former and current Amazon workers who pulled off a union win at a Staten Island warehouse in April. The nascent union then lost a subsequent election at a nearby warehouse.

Amazon had raised its average hourly pay to $18 an hour last year. It said the new raise would cost it $1 billion in the next year.

Separately, the company said its pay access program, Anytime Pay, will also change to allow employees to get paid more than once or twice a month.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A worker pushes a pallet at an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey.

Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

September 28, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

Amazon.com Inc. announced a pay increase for hourly workers in the US that it says will take average starting wage for most front-line employees in warehousing and transportation to more than $19 an hour.

The company’s minimum level of $15 an hour for all hourly workers in the US remains unchanged. For jobs in Amazon’s customer fulfillment and transportation groups, the starting pay will increase to $16 an hour, a spokesperson said Wednesday in an email. 

• Amazon is raising starting pay for its 750,000 US warehouse workers to an average $19 an hour.
• The amount of individual workers' pay bumps varies by location and their tenure at Amazon.
• Insider reviewed images of new pay schedules from nearly a dozen North American warehouses.

Amazon's new warehouse wage hikes will vary widely across its 750,000-strong fulfillment center workforce, and some workers are upset by what they say are relatively meager increases.

The $1 billion move takes place against a backdrop of labor activism that has swept through Amazon warehouses. Workers have staged walkouts and protests at nearly a dozen Amazon warehouses this year, with pay raises at the top of their demands.

In Garner, North Carolina, where workers at Amazon's RDU1 facility are organizing under the name Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, the company's new wage increases fall short of what workers have been asking for, said the union's secretary, Tim Platt. The starting wage at that facility rose from $15.50 to $16.00, according to an image of the new pay scale seen by Insider.

"The raises are a slap in the face," Platt said. Amazon is "failing miserably" at its vision to become Earth's Best Employer, he added.

Elsewhere in the country, some other Amazon employees said the wage increases aren't enough to offset rising costs from inflation. "I got a raise today of $0.25, $10 more every week," said one Amazon employee. "What a joke. The headline is Amazon gave us a raise. The reality is $0.25. I live in Arizona where inflation is out of control. That's the story for us today."

Another Amazon worker, in Sacramento, said he felt "very disrespected and unappreciated with this new, so-called raise and how the media is making this place out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread." Amazon warehouse employees who spoke to Insider asked not to be identified out of fear that the company would retaliate against them.

Amazon has said the wage increases and additional benefits will cost the company nearly $1 billion. 

Some employees shared details of the pay raises, including images of Amazon's new pay scales from nearly a dozen facilities seen by Insider. Here are some key features of the new plan:

• Workers with longer tenure at the company will, in general, receive larger pay bumps.
• In some higher-cost markets, Amazon's starting wages still won't touch $19 an hour. 
• At one warehouse in California's Inland Empire, for instance, the starting wage for new hires is increasing from $17 to $18 an hour.
• Workers at this facility who have been at the company for a year and a half will see their pay rise from $17.85 to $19.20, an increase of $1.35 an hour.
• Staff who have been at this warehouse for two years will see their pay increase by $1.50, to $19.60.

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