Opinion: Dear Amazon: You're welcome here

Hello, Amazon.

I see you approaching. Don’t be shy. You are welcome here. We’re friendly in the Ozarks.

I hear people talking a lot about you. Some were saying things they didn’t know to be true and then they had to take back their words. I’m sure you know how popular you are and that gets people excited. You are a big deal. So, let’s talk. ...

I appreciate the news release you and Republic city officials sent hours before our press time, and that’s a good start. But there’s more to say. First, 500 jobs is a lot. That’ll be a nice boost to our economy.

I know adding jobs in a community is nothing new to you. Your CEO Jeff Bezos has said you’ve created over 400,000 jobs this year alone. That’s incredible given our times, when people have been out of work at record numbers. You really should help stabilize unemployment in our area.

Congratulations on your parent company’s third quarter results. I saw Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) tripled its net income in the quarter to $6.3 billion, up from $2.1 billion in third quarter 2019. Of course, e-commerce has been a silver lining to the struggles of this coronavirus pandemic situation. Your revenue was up to $96 billion in the quarter, so it’s easy to see you’re leading the way there.

It was a commendable move a couple of years ago to increase your starting wage to $15 per hour. I know that’ll be welcome here. It’s well above the current Missouri minimum wage of $9.45 an hour, but we’re rising up to $12 per hour in 2023.

And hats off to Bezos for encouraging other large employers to increase their minimum hourly pay to this new standard, which is more than twice the federal minimum.

I bet it’ll challenge the pay levels by current warehousing and manufacturing operations in our market.

What about the benefits? I’ve read your Enhanced Enterprise Zone application that says all full-time employees in Republic will receive health benefits and you’ll cover at least 50% of their premiums. I also see a 50% match on company 401(k) plan contributions. I understand employee benefits start on day one, and there are sign-on bonuses of up to $1,000 in select U.S. cities. I wonder if that’ll be us.

I also wonder what your company-funded training programs, such as Career Choice, will do for professional development of my peers in the Ozarks. Considering 35,000 people were promoted within the Amazon network this year, and 30,000 associates participated in that Career Choice program to prepare them for job advancements outside of Amazon, I just see opportunity. We like opportunity.

On the flip side, I’ve seen the criticisms about lack of employee engagement and unsafe working conditions, particularly during COVID-19. Most notably, there were those two user-experience designers fired for speaking openly about their work struggles – a violation of your external communications policy. It looks like the company is working to rectify those things, and I hope the positive changes trickle down to operations here.

Next, Republic? Why did you pick there?

Oh, I know that Garton Business Park is in quite the good location for highway access and other warehousing and shipping tenants. Products can make it quickly from your door to ours via James River Freeway before hopping onto Interstate 44, a logistics backbone in middle America. You’ll like your neighbors, Lew’s Fishing, ROi and McLane Co., farther down the road. And I know the park’s real estate developer, Tom Rankin, is a real class act. He’s worked on other industrial development sites, namely the North Creek Business Park off of Kearney Street.

Well, I know you’re busy Amazon, so I’ll let you get on with your business here. It’s a sizable investment for you in the tens of millions of dollars. Rest assured, we have a reputation of a strong work ethic. I’m sure you’ve heard and that’s why you’re interested in us.

I’ll plan to see you at the opening in 2021, but we’ll have plenty more to talk about before then. Let’s make this work for the long haul.

Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.