In his recent Lookout Eugene-Springfield letter to the editor supporting the proposed Amazon warehouse, Joe Ping cites job creation as the major benefit. However, this is a very shortsighted approach. Any look into Amazon’s labor track record shows that these are not, in fact, good jobs.

Amazon is blatantly anti-union and routinely violates worker safety and health standards by denying employees breaks and by creating a dangerous environment. The workplace culture is toxic. This is not even to mention that Amazon plans to be fully automated by 2030, meaning almost all jobs will be eliminated within five years. Any boost to employment will be short-term.

Meanwhile, Amazon plans to ship all packages directly from its warehouse instead of relying on U.S. Postal Service workers. This would be a double-whammy, because this would lead to the loss of high-paying, unionized jobs at the Postal Service to temporary, low-paying driver jobs at Amazon, driving local wages down. And this is not even to mention the many other drawbacks to building an Amazon warehouse, such as increased traffic on already dangerous or congested roads and Amazon’s development of surveillance technology used by ICE in their detentions.

As for Ping’s last statement, asserting that the wetland planned to be paved over for Amazon is no more a wetland than the field behind Walmart on West 11th Avenue is a weak argument. Both harbor irreplaceable ecosystems that can’t be restored once destroyed, and both deserve protection.

One last point: is a giant Amazon warehouse really the first thing we want visitors to Eugene to see as they fly into the airport?

Erica Lyon
Eugene