Viral photos of a huge new Amazon facility in Mexico, surrounded by abandoned homes, are captured on viral.
Amazon claimed it would create jobs. However, research has shown that centers don't always increase overall employment.
In 2015, the company started its push into Mexico to compete with Walmart in ecommerce.
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The sprawling Amazon fulfillment center in Tijuana is surrounded with deteriorating housing.
Omar Martinez, a photographer, captured images of the warehouse. They show the stark contrast between Amazon’s white, crisp facility and the crumbling shacks surrounding it. These images were widely shared and discussed on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook.
Martinez shared the exact location of the warehouse with Insider. It's located about 3 miles south from the US-Mexico border.
Marisa Vano, an Amazon spokesperson told Insider that the "upcoming opening of our Fulfillment Center Tijuana” would create more than 250 jobs in this area.
Amazon's US warehouses pay $15 an hour. The company also boasts about what it calls competitive health-insurance rates and retirement benefits. This includes the Bessemer warehouse in Alabama where employees voted to not unionize earlier this year.
The Quad-City Times reported that Amazon's low wages may force local retailers in Iowa to match it. This could reduce employment rates as they are limited by how many people they can hire. For communities to experience long-term economic growth, they need to have high-paying jobs.
A report by the Economic Policy Institute from 2018 showed that there was a 30% increase of storage and warehouse jobs in areas where an Amazon warehouse was built, but not always an increase in overall employment. According to the report, "some sort of job displacement is occurring" or that the growth in warehouse jobs is not sufficient to translate into broad-based economic gains for the entire area.
In 2018, The Economist reported that Amazon paid its fulfillment-center workers lower than other employers.
Amazon entered the Mexican market in 2015 to compete with Walmart. Amazon has now established five fulfillment centers in Mexico, and Vano stated to Insider that 15,000 Mexican jobs have been created since then.
Last year, it announced that it would spend $100 million to build new warehouses in Mexico. This will improve delivery times. The company will open two fulfillment centers in Monterrey, Guadalajara and will have at most 27 delivery points scattered throughout Mexico.
Mexico State Gov. According to Mexico News Daily, Alfredo Del Mazo Maza stated that Amazon's expansion would counteract the country's pandemic-driven economic decline.
The governor stated that Amazon has been "one of the principal allies" and a strategic partner in economic recovery and the achievement of goals set forth by the current administration to improve Mexican families' well-being.
