Workers will be paid at least $15 an hour with health insurance, up to 20 weeks of maternal and parental paid leave, and other benefits. The Seattle company will chip in 50 cents for every dollar workers contribute to their 401(k) retirement accounts.
The company will also prepay 95% of tuition for courses in high-demand fields such as game design, visual communications, nursing, radiology and IT programming.
Warehouse workers will work alongside robots to pick, pack and ship items such as books, electronics and toys to customers. Amazon has deployed the use of robots at 26 of its fulfillment centers worldwide.
One hundred robots shaped like race cars and looking like a Roomba vacuum on steroids will move yellow bins the size of a standing freezer across the floor. Each robot can handle 1,500 pounds of products.
During a demonstration, the bins placed on top of the robots glided silently across the room.
Three of the floors will be used for that operation, taking products from stacks and sending them to the first floor, where they will get boxed and readied for shipment.
The warehouse can hold 40 million items, half of them from companies whose products are available on Amazon.com. Hundreds of trucks will unload goods and load packages destined for customers from 100 loading docks.
From the fulfillment center, packages will go to smaller delivery stations, where they are loaded onto vans that will deliver them to customers.
EXPANDING AMAZON’S TREASURE VALLEY FOOTPRINT
The building will be one of 176 fulfillment centers Amazon operates around the world. Amazon operates a local delivery station at 1411 3rd Ave. North, near Franklin Boulevard and Interstate 84 in Nampa. It is also remodeling an 80,000-square-foot former FedEx ground delivery warehouse at 6752 S. Business Way, east of the Boise Airport, that will be used as a delivery station.
Amazon uses a parking lot at the Boise Outlets mall off I-84 in East Boise to load its delivery vans.
The new center in Nampa was developed in partnership with Panattoni Development Co. Inc. The project was code-named “Project Bronco” when it came to light in 2018, amid speculation that Amazon would occupy the building. But the company did not officially acknowledge it was involved until October.
Last year, the Nampa City Council authorized an agreement with Panattoni to fund $14 million in roadway improvements aimed at alleviating the increased traffic the center will bring. The distribution center expects to generate about 7,000 trips per day during peak delivery season.
