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Amazon To Open $21 Million State-of-the-Art Warehouse In Tijuana Slum (vice.com) 145

This month, Amazon will open a $21 million state-of-the-art warehouse in Tijuana, Mexico, that abuts a housing settlement made of cardboard, tarp, and wood scraps along the Tijuana River, less than three miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Motherboard reports: In recent days, images of the shiny, new warehouse complex emblazoned with a giant blue Amazon logo -- and its impoverished environs with its unpaved roads and cardboard roofs have gone viral on social media, a stark display of globalization. The images have drawn comparisons to dystopian science fiction. Amazon's founder and chairman Jeff Bezos, who recently travelled in a rocket to outer space (and then thanked his workers for making that possible), is the world's wealthiest person. Marisa Vano, a spokesperson for Amazon, said, "Since our arrival in Mexico, Amazon has created more than 15,000 jobs throughout the country, creating employment opportunities with competitive salaries and benefits for all of our employees. Our wages and benefits strengthen local communities, and these investments help these areas to grow and to build better futures."

Amazon, which is steadily spreading its reach across the globe, has been busy scaling up operations in Mexico and throughout Latin America over the past several years. The Mexican outlet Proceso reported that the mayor of Tijuana has said that the new warehouse will speed up delivery times for Amazon goods within the Mexico border city and in nearby cities. Amazon Prime membership allows for unlimited two-day shipping throughout much of Mexico.

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Amazon To Open $21 Million State-of-the-Art Warehouse In Tijuana Slum

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  • They created 15,000 jobs, but how many local shops have gone out of business?
    • And of more immediate (past) concern, how many and how are people who used to live in the part of slum that's Amazon warehouse addressed, or zilch has been done? Were the means in removing the squatters "reasonable" or as best as they could when a portion of them are guaranteed to be unwilling to leave?
      • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @07:38AM (#61778629) Journal

        Obviously I don't know each and every person in TJ, but the people in my company from TJ who used to be incredibly poor moved to apartments and houses when they got hired for 3X-6X minimum wage.

        My direct team members make about 3X the *average* income in Mexico, so where do you think they live now?

      • I got the big-bad corporate retailers mixed up.

        For a moment, I thought that Walmart was building a distribution center in a poor border community in Mexico.

        That Walmart would be building new retail stores in the well-to-do upscale neighborhoods in Mexico. And that the shopping experience would be a Mexican person entering the store being in proximity to thin, well-dressed U.S. immigrants who spoke fluent, idiomatic Mexican Spanish? A Bizarro Walmart?

      • I am sure most of the local politicians and Amazon has sold it to them, that these people who live in the slum, would get a nice job at Amazon. While the truth would be far more complex, where these people may have conditions that make them difficult to hire for work, or are unable to work in such an environment.
        Where most of the jobs will come from out of the area, because they will be more employable, and would prefer to commute than live in that area.

      • How dare Amazon introduce warehouse jobs in a deeply struggling part of TJ! They should have built the facility far away from the slums, ensuring the areas poorest residents are incapable of working in the Amazon facility and continue living in squalor.

        • Hm? It's a valid question, why do people assume it's a Judgement?

          Developments are lifesaving when done correctly. When it's not, forced evictions and such in development countries are absolutely brutal, cue CC P styled thug and Riot police forced evictions. (In my childhood place, even some of the most peaceful, well planned area redevelopments of my old place had resulted in evictions resistance that ends with fights with the police before.)

          Worst case scenario for some place (not China) local people fi

    • Someone else reminded me of this scene from Idiocracy. [wp.com]
      We keep saying this over and over again, but that movie was supposed to be fiction, not a documentary.

    • Most of all, those 15,000 jobs where somewhere else and not here.

    • Re:tit for tat (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @08:29AM (#61778743)

      Being that it is warehouse vs an actual store, I don't see it being an immediate negative towards the local economy. Perhaps a long term effect where people in Mexico may buy more goods online, vs the limited sections at the local stores.

      However those 15,000 jobs will often want houses nearby, being that they have a steady job, they may want nicer homes, also they may want places to eat for lunch, or after work.

      The real question is what will happen to that community when Amazon moves its resources to a different area?

      I live in a rural area, where there is a quaint village, while it is rather clean and well kept, it is also quite poor, with many of its 19th century buildings vacant, with a rather complex infrastructure, that the locals can hardly afford. It was because a hundred years ago, it was a good manufacturing hub, being next to the Rails, and a river being a hub to many states. But the problem is for a small town, there was only a small handful of factories. When one left, the town was decimated. Because so much of the economy was centered around that factory, after it left, a lot of the richer people (the bosses, and managers, foremen...) left the town to get a job or move with the company. The poorer people who cannot afford to be as mobile, tried to get what ever work they can get, often well below their actual skills, for much less money. Bringing in less tax revenue, their children when they moved out they left the town to work in the bigger economies, then they got old, and stopped working all together. All with a town with a complex infrastructure built to support a factory, that cannot be easily be turned off, or reduced, because that would be an expensive undertaking, or they keep spending a lot of the tax money to keeping the infrastructure running.

      If Amazon were to actually hep the economy, create a warehouse that would employee less than 1,000 people, and only require minor improvements to the areas infrastructure. but build 15 of those in different communities. For that case if Amazon had to close that location (even all 15 of them) they wouldn't leave such a scar on the local community.

      • by shmlco ( 594907 )

        Forget moving. What happens when Amazon gets the whole picker/box-stuffer robot thing worked out and fires 95% of all of its warehouse employees?

        They've already gotten local tax concessions based on the idea that these places will create jobs. But at some point they'll ditch the jobs and then the area will have no jobs AND no tax income.

        And the same thing won't happen just there, but everywhere...

        • They've already gotten local tax concessions based on the idea that these places will create jobs.

          Most jurisdictions tie the tax breaks directly to the jobs. So when the jobs disappear, so do the tax breaks.

          We aren't all as dumb as Wisconsin.

        • Governments need to learn that these tax concessions never actually end up providing what was promised. It's just a way for big companies to cheat smaller governments. It's not that these companies want to be overtly evil, it's just that being evil is a successful business practice.

      • It sort of reminds me when Sun Microsystems set up a campus in poor East Palo Alto. The workers most definitely did not want to live in East Palo Alto. There were also walls put up, even on sides of some roads, to limit the view of the area (or probably justified to reduce noise to residents, but the optics of it could go either way).

      • The real question is what will happen to that community when Amazon moves its resources to a different area?

        As someone that grew up in a place poorer than Tijuana, I'd say TJ residents have too much to worry about *right now* to consider that question.

        Right now that warehouse will give jobs that people desperately need. I've seen the effects (mostly positive) of such jobs in such areas. The jobs are hard and long, but they give people the first real chance to a steady salary in a formal economy. That translates to being able to put their kids to school and to rent a home in safer, more sanitary areas.

        Within

    • They created 15,000 jobs, but how many local shops have gone out of business?

      That warehouse doesn't look like it services the local community so probably not very many. This seems like a win for this community. New jobs for some of them. All those people with new jobs will have more money to spend in the community causing other people in the area to also have more money to spend. Yes, Amazon likely get a cheaper labor force but if Amazon would have built this same warehouse in a wealthy area it likely wouldn't have near the same benefit for either Amazon or the local community.

  • by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @06:58AM (#61778571) Journal

    Amazon building a warehouse in a poor neighborhood and thus giving hundreds to thousands of residents jobs is a good thing.

    • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday September 09, 2021 @07:07AM (#61778585) Homepage Journal
      • by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @08:02AM (#61778679) Homepage

        What a terrible set of bogus arguments and cherry-picked numbers.

        "Amazon destroys more jobs than it creates." We shouldn't look at paying people to do jobs inefficiently as a plus -- it is good that Amazon needs fewer employees to manage a given amount of sales. Efficiency produces more consumer surplus!

        "Most Amazon jobs are awful." Unsurprisingly, wages in a place like Chattanooga are lower than the US average, which has a cost of living that is about 16% lower [bestplaces.net] than the US average.

        Etc etc. But, hey, you have an eight-year-old hatchet piece. Good for you.

        • What a terrible set of bogus arguments and cherry-picked numbers.

          You mean what Amazon submits to the IRS?

          We shouldn't look at paying people to do jobs inefficiently as a plus -- it is good that Amazon needs fewer employees to manage a given amount of sales. Efficiency produces more consumer surplus!

          Not if consumers can't afford to buy things because they don't have jobs and corporate interests are lobbying against UBI.

          • by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @08:17AM (#61778721) Homepage

            Now do farming. It used to take many times as many farmers to produce a given amount of food. Now it takes a lot fewer. All those poor farmers, forced to do terrible things like learn to code.

            • Now do farming.

              Farming used to be sustainable, now it isn't. Mass factory farming is basically hydroponics in a dirt medium. Take away the synthetic fertilizer and the land becomes worthless as the fertilizer and mechanical cultivation (creating hardpan) has destroyed the land's ability to support crops without it.

              • by Entrope ( 68843 )

                Citation needed on unsustainability and sterilizing the soil.

                People don't put crops on farmland that isn't needed any more. It gets deforested [umd.edu] instead, which is better for the environment, and seems to work just fine.

        • >>> Amazon creates jobs!!
          >> No it doesn't, it costs more jobs than it creates
          > That's a GOOD thing.

          It can't be both.

    • Oh I'm absolutely certain the second hand market (of items in mint condition) around Tijuana will boom.

    • From TFA,

      ...the Amazon spokesperson said the warehouse would create 250 new jobs available to the local community...

      250 jobs in a city of 1.8 million jobs isn't going to do anything for the local economy, other than help put more small stores out of business.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        From TFA,

        ...the Amazon spokesperson said the warehouse would create 250 new jobs available to the local community...

        250 jobs in a city of 1.8 million jobs isn't going to do anything for the local economy, other than help put more small stores out of business.

        How is a distribution warehouse putting local businesses out of business?

        Clue: It doesn't.

        250 Jobs will have a knock on effect as people who earn those wages will spend them, more often than not locally. The business owners in turn will spend that money again. Granted 250 jobs won't change the entire city, but it's more than just 250 jobs and definitely not killing local businesses.

      • It will PROFOUNDLY impact the lives of those 250 workers. That neighborhood will blossom as Amazon paychecks filter and circulate thru the local community.

        Rather than applaud a positive action in a struggling community, you sit in judgement and condemn the effort as insufficient/not meaningful.

        • It will PROFOUNDLY impact the lives of those 250 workers. That neighborhood will blossom as Amazon paychecks filter and circulate thru the local community.

          So what you're saying is if we raise the minimum wage in the U.S. it will profoundly impact the lives of the workers. The economy will blossom as that extra money in their paychecks filter and circulate through the economy.

          Got it.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Amazon building a warehouse in a poor neighborhood and thus giving hundreds to thousands of residents jobs is a good thing.

      Notice Amazon is advertising this as a "state of the art" warehouse. Understand that will likely mean job numbers measured in dozens. The rest, will likely be automated.

      Not to mention the fact that an Amazon warehouse going up in an area ultimately means a net zero gain of jobs in that area due to the ones they destroy.

      Hundreds of thousands? Delusional bullshit at best. Your comment should have been modded Funny for accuracy.

      • Really? The local shops in this neighborhood will all be shuttered as the locals turn to online commerce and start spending all their money at Amazon?

        This facility helps the poorest of poor neighborhoods by offering the locals good-paying jobs. Any jobs lost will be far away from the facility, where the delivery trucks actually make deliveries.

    • by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @09:36AM (#61778927)
      And what proof do you have that Amazon have given jobs to the locals? In a previous example, Amazon announced it was building one of these warehouses in New York City. Then the politicians and government officials asked how many jobs were going to locals; Amazon suddenly stopped their project and withdrew.
    • Amazon building a warehouse in a poor neighborhood and thus giving hundreds to thousands of residents jobs is a good thing.

      Exactly!

  • Amazon exploiting cheap labor / land in an low regulation environment or a Tijuana Donkey Show?
  • Um (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @07:46AM (#61778639) Journal

    In recent days, images of the shiny, new warehouse complex emblazoned with a giant blue Amazon logo -- and its impoverished environs with its unpaved roads and cardboard roofs have gone viral on social media, a stark display of globalization.

    Where the hell do you idiots think that prosperity comes from?

    It was a slum before Amazon was ever there. If amazon has jobs for some people who live there, that can only improve things.

    What is wrong with idiot 1st worlders today???

    • Re: Um (Score:3, Informative)

      First worlders are spoiled. Most of the people here work in tech and earn great salaries for doing very little and they assume it will be that way forever. They think money just appears from the government, even though their salaries are funded by corporations and venture capital. They call themselves social democrats but they are really just spoiled westerners who have lives a very very good life and love to complain about the west. Meanwhile they would not last a week anywhere else. To top it off: they do
      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        First worlders are spoiled. Most of the people here work in tech and earn great salaries for doing very little and they assume it will be that way forever.

        That first sentence is correct, but the second is just not true.

        • Most people in slashdot work in IT or programming. Most are white males. Most earn six figures or close to it. Most have no idea what real poverty is like. Most have no idea where their salaries are coming from. Most have no idea where the luxuries they enjoy are coming from. Virtually all of the are spoiled little shits who would not last a week outside of their capitalist bubble. And that includes all the hipster shitheads at vice and medium.com and all the fake Marxist blogs out there. If computers were
          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            Just so everyone is clear, the parent post troll is rsillvergun with two l's. It's an account that first posted on Thursday and is obviously intended to try to create confusion with the account of the real rsilvergun.

      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        For the sake of clarity, the troll in the parent post is rsillvergun with two l's. It's an account that first posted on Thursday and is obviously intended to try to create confusion with the account of the real rsilvergun.

    • It was a slum before Amazon was ever there. If amazon has jobs for some people who live there, that can only improve things.

      So that land was completely empty before Amazon moved in? There was no displacement of people? Also you are assuming Amazon gave jobs to the locals. Many times they do not. By "improving" the situation, Amazon took land away from people who cannot afford to move and may not have given anyone jobs. How is that improvement?

    • Re:Um (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @11:57AM (#61779427)

      Where the hell do you idiots think that prosperity comes from?

      I suspect that it comes more from smaller local business indigenous startups, a vast swathe of them, helped by reductions in red tape and a growing middle class. I suspect that a huge multinational won't contribute much prosperity to the neighborhood, since it will have heavily optimized ways to extract value out. But I don't know where to look for data to judge whether either hypothesis is true. I don't think this makes me an "idiot".

    • It's arguable that Amazon has some not so great business practices. This leads dumb people to believe that literally every single thing that Amazon touches turns to shit, and that they are pure unmitigated evil so we must gnash our teeth and grab our pitchforks at every Amazon announcement, no matter what it is. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in the world now with no ability to see shades of gray. Everything is either completely black, or completely white. So for those folks Amazon = evil.

      Peop

  • Apparently rich cannot get any richer without cheap workforce...
  • Only a "source" like Vice would call a massive new source of entry-level jobs "dystopian."

  • Nobody told you why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @08:06AM (#61778687)

    That's Amazon's portal into the US for evading tariffs on imports from China. Mexico doesn't levy those tariffs and once the parts are in Mexico, they can be freely imported into the US per the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

    • by jbengt ( 874751 ) on Thursday September 09, 2021 @08:51AM (#61778793)

      That's Amazon's portal into the US for evading tariffs on imports from China. Mexico doesn't levy those tariffs and once the parts are in Mexico, they can be freely imported into the US per the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

      Other companies are known to do similar tariff-evading tricks, but it is not that simple and it is generally illegal. Just because it stopped in a warehouse in Mexico, doesn't mean the law considers it to not be imported from China.

      This is more likely a way for Amazon to avoid the higher costs of doing business in the US while distributing goods in the SW parts of the USA as well as in Mexico.

      Companies that do evade tariffs by transshipping usually have to pay local manufacturers in the middleman country to forge country-of-origin documentation. Because this is Amazon, which is prominent in the eyes of the public and the politicians, I doubt they could get away with that. Still, they could very well get away with turning a blind eye to their suppliers doing it.

    • That's Amazon's portal into the US for evading tariffs on imports from China. Mexico doesn't levy those tariffs and once the parts are in Mexico, they can be freely imported into the US per the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

      That is not how taxes work. What you are describing is illegal.

    • "once the parts are in Mexico, they can be freely imported into the US per the North American Free Trade Agreement"

      I'm a US Customs broker. This is entirely wrong.

      The only way they can be imported into the US free under USMCA (NAFTA doesn't exist any more) is if they are materially altered to the point of changing their harmonized tariff code...like anything else, in any other country in the world.

      Either you don't know what you're talking about (so should not speak up) or are lying. Which is it?

      • if they are materially altered to the point of changing their harmonized tariff code

        There are far too many people who want to be surprised Pikachu soon when it turns out Amazon crushes the law abiding competition by circumventing tariffs. Forgive me for not elaborating a complete tariff avoidance scheme with all the details. But if you believe that Amazon places a big warehouse just across the border, with all the complications that entails, and isn't doing it to leverage lower or non-existent tariffs, I'll offer you that bridge too. That you're naive is the charitable assumption. The othe

  • If Amazon pays workers just the Mexican minimum wage (minimum is about $7.02 USD per day), it's not enough to get by on. If Amazon pays a more reasonable amount (e.g., closer to $50 USD per day = $1000/month USD), it's enough to live on comfortably, and they would have a surplus of job candidates.

    What does it cost to live in Mexico? Rent of a two-bedroom apartment in a budget neighborhood is about $100-125 USD (maybe $125-150 for 3-bedroom). A refill of a natural gas cylinder is about $22 USD (once a mon

  • Still looks a lot nicer than simaler scenes in tbe US.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Consumers are willing to shovel money into its pockets in spite of its labor practices. No government action will change that. Keyboard warriors will type out their rage between amazon deliveries to their concrete filing cabinet housing

  • shithole slum offering zero gets replaced with warehouse offering jobs that might just get people and their families OUT of said shithole slum

    Leftie keyboard warriors outraged.

    It's easy to be outraged when you don't have to put food in your kids stomachs.

  • The slum dwellers will be worried about the neighborhood going down.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov

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