For hundreds of years, people have grown and harvested tobacco in Windsor. By the middle of the 20th century, tobacco farms in the town were employing several thousand workers.

Some tobacco is still cultivated in Windsor, but agriculture is no longer its economic focal point. The new “cash crops” are huge buildings that have been constructed in recent years on former farm land and now receive and send out millions of consumer goods each week.

New employees take a tour of Amazon's BDL4 fulfillment center on Kennedy Road in Windsor, Conn., on Nov. 20, 2024. More than 3,000 people work at BDL4, which is Amazon's largest facility in Connecticut.

With more than 6,000 employees across its three facilities in Windsor, Amazon ranks as the largest employer in the town. Windsor is just one of the 13 cities and towns in Connecticut where the Seattle-headquartered e-commerce giant has distribution hubs. Altogether, Amazon employs approximately 17,000 people in full-time and part-time positions across Connecticut, making it one of the largest private-sector employers in the state .

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From the vantage point of Amazon executives and a number of elected officials, the company’s buildup in places such as Windsor in the past decade has been a boon to Connecticut because of the creation of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investment. The expansion stands out even more in light of the state's economic struggles since the Great Recession . But from the perspective of Amazon’s critics, the company's burgeoning presence is no miracle. A number of elected officials and union leaders allege that Amazon has prioritized growth over its workers' safety and wellbeing, while some economists and consultants believe that the company's dominance has hurt other parts of the economy.

“I hope they continue providing jobs,” said state Rep. Jane Garibay, whose district includes parts of Windsor and Windsor Locks, in an interview. “The employees I come in touch with like working there. But like any job, it’s not for everyone. It is fast-paced and demanding.”

Growing in Connecticut

The growth of digital commerce has fueled the expansion of Amazon, which Jeff Bezos founded in 1994 and initially ran as an online bookstore out of his garage in a Seattle suburb. Retail e-commerce sales totaled an estimated $300 billion, on a seasonally adjusted basis, in the third quarter of 2024, up 7.4 percent year over year, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. E-commerce sales accounted for about 16 percent of all retail sales in the third quarter of 2024, more than double their share in the same period in 2015.

During the same time frame, Amazon’s income has multiplied. The company generated sales last year of about $575 billion, nearly eight times its revenues in 2013. The surge reflects not only the growth of Amazon’s e-commerce operations, but also rising revenues across a number of other businesses including cloud computing, entertainment and groceries.

Based on its 2023 revenues, Amazon ranked No. 2 in this year’s edition of the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations . Walmart, one of Amazon’s biggest rivals, ranked No. 1, with 2023 revenues of about $648 billion.

Like Walmart, Amazon has become a ubiquitous part of daily life in the U.S. Across the country's highways, goods are hauled in trucks emblazoned with Amazon's logo. On residential streets, the delivery vans that bring packages to customers' homes have become as familiar as school buses and U.S. Postal Service trucks.

Amazon also parallels Walmart as a giant source of jobs. About 1 million work for Amazon in the U.S., with most of them based in the company's distribution centers. Within the U.S. private sector, only Walmart has more employees, with a head count of nearly 1.6 million.

Given the ongoing growth of Amazon's distribution network, it was unsurprising that it wanted to establish facilities in Connecticut. For one, the state is located between Boston and New York City and served by some of the country's busiest highways. Connecticut's demographics are also appealing to retailers, with the state long ranking among the wealthiest based on per-capita income.

Amazon's confidence in Connecticut crystallized in 2015. In that year, it opened its first fulfillment and sorting centers in the state — in Windsor and Wallingford, respectively. It demonstrated its belief in the state again with the opening of a fulfillment center in North Haven in 2019 .

The company became even more dominant during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people ramped up their online shopping while they were stuck at home. In 2020, the company opened a fulfillment center in Cromwell. In 2021, it leased space for a sorting center in Manchester. In 2022, it opened its second fulfillment center in Windsor.

In addition to the fulfillment and sorting centers, Amazon has opened 10 delivery stations in Connecticut in the past few years. There are delivery facilities in Bristol, Danbury, Glastonbury, Newington, Orange, South Windsor, Stratford, Trumbull, Wallingford and Windsor.

As Amazon has opened sites across the state, its in-state head count has grown markedly. Some of its facilities have workforces the size of small towns. More than 3,000 employees work at the company's largest complex in Connecticut, the fulfillment center opened in 2022 in Windsor. The hub, which is known as BDL4, was built on former tobacco fields.

“The building's about 3.5 million square feet. To give you context, that's about 66 football fields,” said Subu Balasubramanian, general manager of BDL4, during a recent tour of the facility. “We have inbound and outbound operations, with inbound pushing about 5 million units a week, and outbound doing the same.”

Amazon wants to open at least one more facility in Connecticut: a fulfillment center on the Naugatuck-Waterbury line . Plans for that project are under review by local officials in those two municipalities.

“There are a variety of factors we consider when selecting a location for an Amazon facility. Some of those factors include a dedicated workforce who will raise the bar on being customer obsessed, as well as great local support,” said Glendowlyn Thames, senior manager of public policy for Amazon, in a written statement. “We've found both in the state of Connecticut and the municipalities where Amazon has operations.”

The resounding majority of Amazon’s approximately 17,000 employees in Connecticut work in its fulfillment, sorting and delivery facilities. But the company also has a significant presence in the state through Whole Foods Market, which the company acquired in 2017. There are Whole Foods stores in Avon, Danbury, Darien, Fairfield, Glastonbury, Greenwich, Milford, Stamford, South Windsor, Westport and West Hartford. The Stamford store, which opened on Dec. 12 , is Whole Foods' newest in the state.

In addition to Amazon’s direct hires, the company’s operations in Connecticut support about 17,000 “indirect jobs,” according to company data. Those indirect jobs include positions in industries such as construction, retail and professional services. Amazon officials were not able to confirm, however, whether the indirect jobs included the employees of its Freight Service Partners and Delivery Service Partners, which are third parties that, respectively, handle “middle mile” deliveries between Amazon's facilities and “last mile” deliveries to customers' addresses.

Only a couple of other companies have in-state workforces whose size rivals Amazon. RTX, whose operations include East Hartford-based jet-engine maker Pratt & Whitney , also has about 17,000 employees based in Connecticut. Groton-based submarine maker General Dynamics Electric Boat employs about 16,000 people in the state.

Among other retail giants, Walmart employs about 8,500 people across its approximately 30 stores in Connecticut. It does not have any distribution centers in the state.

Within the private sector, only the Hartford HealthCare and Yale New Haven Health systems have larger head counts in Connecticut. They each employ more than 30,000 people in the state.

Inevitably, Amazon's employment growth has made a significant financial impact. Factoring in employee compensation, as well as other categories such as infrastructure, the company has invested about $9.5 billion in Connecticut since 2010, according to a report that the company released earlier this year.

Support from state government

Amazon is one of several large companies that have received multimillion-dollar packages of state funding for creating and maintaining jobs . Such deals were particularly prevalent during the 2010s under then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, when state officials were trying to jump-start the economy after it was hammered by the Great Recession.

To support the construction of the BDL2 fulfillment center that opened in 2015 in Windsor, Amazon received a $3.9 million state sales tax exemption. In addition, the company has earned $4.5 million in tax credits from the state Department of Economic and Community Development. The company could receive up to $15 million in tax credits, including the already disbursed credits, if it maintains an annual average of at least 3,798 full-time jobs in Connecticut, including 1,800 in North Haven, through 2027.

“This is how we continue to modernize our economy, by making these changes and making it happen for Amazon. And Amazon is making it happen for small businesses, as well,” Gov. Ned Lamont said during a tour of the fulfillment center in North Haven in 2019 . “You’re helping take Connecticut into the 21st century. We should welcome this, what you do for small business and what you do for the community.”

A number of Republican elected officials have also expressed support for the company's increasing presence in the state.

“I believe Amazon has been an exemplary corporate partner,” said state Sen. Henri Martin, R-Bristol, the ranking Senate member of the General Assembly's Commerce Committee, earlier this year.

Debate about workplace conditions

Amazon officials tout not only the quantity, but also the quality, of the jobs provided by their company.

“We offer great career opportunities, complete with competitive pay, comprehensive benefits and upskilling opportunities that are important to people looking for jobs right now,” Thames said. “As part of Amazon’s Upskilling 2025 Pledge, employees are eligible for the Amazon Career Choice education benefit. Currently, Amazon has four national partners and collaborates locally with UConn and CT State Community College to provide Amazon employees access to pre-paid college tuition.”

Among key changes in the past few years, Amazon announced in 2022 an increase in average starting hourly pay, from $18 to $19, for frontline workers . Connecticut’s current minimum hourly wage is $15.69, and it will increase to $16.35 on Jan. 1.

In September 2024, the company announced an increase of at least $1.50 in the hourly rate for frontline workers, raising their average hourly base wage to more than $22.

An Amazon worker who worked 40 hours per week, at $19 per hour, would make $39,520 annually. The annual total would rise to $52,000 for an employee with a $25 hourly rate. In Connecticut, during the first quarter of 2024, wages for warehousing and storage occupations equaled a median of $39,601, on an annual basis, compared to $57,870 for all occupations, according to data from the state Department of Labor.

Walking the floors of Amazon facilities such as BDL4 in Windsor, one will see many people in their 20s and 30s. At the same time, the company also hires many mid-career professionals.

Rock Bolden joined Amazon in 2015, after running his own clothing-and-footwear store in New Haven and working at Nike. During his four and a half years at Amazon, Bolden worked as an area manager at the sorting center in Wallingford and fulfillment center in North Haven.

“Amazon allowed me to see more in-depth the power of e-commerce,” Bolden said in an interview. “The world is running by the power of ‘dotcom’ right now.”

But there is hardly universal satisfaction across Amazon's workforce. On Dec. 19, workers went on strike across four facilities in California and one each in New York City; Skokie, Illinois; and Atlanta. Workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, joined the picket line on Saturday. Those work stoppages took place after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which said it represents nearly 10,000 Amazon workers across 10 facilities, alleged that Amazon ignored a deadline set by the union for contract negotiations. Amazon officials dispute that the Teamsters represent that many workers and accuse the Teamsters of threatening and trying to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join the union.

In Connecticut, the Teamsters organized a protest in June outside BDL4 . Neither the Teamsters nor Amazon would say whether workers here have union representation.

The National Labor Relations Board has two open cases involving union elections at Amazon facilities, but neither of those sites is in Connecticut.

At the same time, some members of Connecticut's Congressional delegation have criticized Amazon's labor practices. In a recent interview, Sen. Richard Blumenthal said that his office has received a number of complaints from Connecticut-based workers of Amazon, with their reported issues including quota systems for worker productivity, the denial of breaks and bathroom visits, as well as the company’s use of “AI-powered” surveillance cameras.

“I’m concerned about fair pay, safe working conditions, basic dignity and respect,” Blumenthal said. “And this company seems to be putting profits and revenue above its workers’ safety and fair compensation.”

Amazon officials maintain that the company is running safe and fair workplaces.

“It’s a common misperception that employees cannot take breaks when they need them, but that’s false,” Amazon spokesman Mike Murphy said in a statement. “Employees can take breaks any time to meet with a manager or HR, use the restroom or grab a drink of water. These informal breaks are in addition to employees’ two regularly scheduled breaks and their lunch break. We comply with applicable laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we operate — including those related to employment decisions, employee break periods, technology use and any others that pertain to our workplace.”

Some state legislators have also expressed concerns about Amazon's treatment of its workers. Citing a new report on injuries at Amazon facilities released by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, state Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and state Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, announced on Dec. 18 that they would re-introduce next year a bill that aims to bolster warehouse workers' safety. Amazon disputed the report's findings.

“At the (2024) public hearing on this bill, we heard troubling testimony about Amazon workers in Connecticut having dramatically higher injury rates than other workers, even those in the warehousing industry,” said Kushner, co-chairwoman of the state legislature's Labor and Public Employees Committee, in a statement. “And it’s caused by their production quotas and injurious, repetitive movements.”

In contrast, Garibay said that she has not received any complaints from workers at Amazon's facilities in Windsor.

“I haven’t had anyone come to me to say, ‘I was hurt at Amazon,’ or they were careless,” said Garibay, who served for nearly 20 years as the executive director of Windsor's Chamber of Commerce. “They seem to take, from my view, safety very seriously.”

Similarly, Bolden said that he and his co-workers worked hard but were treated fairly during his time at Amazon. He left the company in 2020 not because he was unhappy, but because he was ready to start another business. In 2021, he opened the DA'WORLD clothing store on Whalley Avenue in New Haven.

“In 2020, I started bumping into people I hadn’t seen in a long time,” Bolden said. “People kept asking me, ‘when are you going to open a store again?’”

Alongside the examination of working conditions in Amazon's facilities, some of Connecticut's top elected officials are also scrutinizing Amazon's treatment of the drivers hauling its wares.

“Amazon’s freight truck drivers haul a variety of goods across highways every day, and their branded delivery vehicles are a virtually unavoidable feature in neighborhoods all over the country,” wrote a group of approximately 30 senators, including Blumenthal, Connecticut's other senator, Chris Murphy , and now-Vice President-elect JD Vance, in a letter in January to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. “Though nearly all Americans are familiar with and reliant on the services of Amazon-branded vehicles — which are operated by drivers in Amazon-branded vests who exclusively deliver packages with big, bold Amazon labels — few realize that Amazon refuses to acknowledge the workers who operate these vehicles as its legal employees.”

Amazon’s Delivery Service Partners hire and manage their own employees, said Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, in a responding letter in February. He also said that since the launch of the Delivery Service Partner program in 2018 the company has invested more than $8 billion in technology, safety features and services for Delivery Service Partners and their drivers.

Robots and job growth

Amazon will likely remain one of the largest employers in Connecticut in the foreseeable future. Amazon officials have said they intend to keep hiring, but they have not provided any estimates.

“Logistics won't raise household incomes in Connecticut, won't drive future job creation and won't create a basis for future growth,” said Fred Carstensen, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Connecticut, in an email.

Meanwhile, one of the greatest questions facing logistics is how ongoing advances in automation and artificial intelligence will affect workers. About 750,000 mobile robots operate across Amazon’s U.S. fulfillment centers — but the technology is intended to help, not replace, employees, according to Amazon officials. Within BDL4 in Windsor, which is designated as one of Amazon's Robotics Fulfillment Centers, the automated assistance includes robotic arms that lift and sort packages and squat, wheeled “drives” that find goods and move them to employees picking items for orders.

“Years of innovation has allowed us to build, test and scale this unique, highly integrated suite of robotics systems that work to support employees fulfilling customer orders,” said Scott Dresser, vice president of Amazon Robotics, in a summary of the robotic technology posted on the company's website . “Thanks to advancements in AI, these technologies integrate seamlessly and will help us drive an estimated 25 percent productivity improvement at next-generation fulfillment facilities. This allows us to deliver more efficiently for customers, while supporting the employees who make it happen.”

But even if Amazon keeps hiring at a robust pace in Connecticut, recent history has shown that any one company can only make a limited impact on overall jobs growth. The state still has fewer payroll positions than it did in March 2008 , when it reached its all-time employment peak. West Virginia and Wyoming are the only other states that have fewer jobs today than they did in early 2008.

Government, manufacturing and financial activities are the sectors that have shed the most jobs in Connecticut since 2008. But the state’s post-Great Recession jobs recovery has not gotten much of a boost in recent years from trade, transportation and utilities, the sector that includes retail trade and logistics. The sector had approximately 297,000 jobs in October 2024 — about the same as the total in October 2014, but down slightly from October 2004, according to state Department of Labor data. While the approximately 71,000 jobs in the sector’s transportation, warehousing and utilities subgroup in October marked an increase of more than 40 percent from 10 years ago, the approximately 164,000 positions in October 2024 in the subgroup of retail trade — the largest component of trade, transportation and utilities — comprised an 11 percent decrease from a decade ago.

The decline in retail employment reflects many retail chains' decisions in recent years to reduce their number of stores or even eliminate their brick-and-mortar operations .

“Those closings have been catalyzed by the accelerating retail ice age, which has been caused by Amazon, in parallel path with Walmart,” said Burt Flickinger III, managing director of the Manhattan-based retail and consumer goods consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, in an interview.

In addition to the impact of e-commerce, retail employment has been affected by the tight labor market in recent years . As of October 2024, Connecticut’s labor force, which includes workers and unemployed people looking for work, was about 2 percent smaller than it was in October 2019, according to Department of Labor data. The trend reflects factors such as widespread retirements during the pandemic.

Other demographic shifts have also affected the retail workforce, according to Department of Labor officials.

“We are in a situation right now where the youngest worker cohort is actually fairly small, compared to historic standards, because of the drop in the birth rate about 15 to 20 years ago with the Great Recession,” said Patrick Flaherty, the Department of Labor's director of research, in an interview. “Retail is a sector that is likely to hire younger workers. And we have been encouraging young people to look at jobs in manufacturing and other career types of jobs, so there might not be as many workers available to take the entry-level retail jobs that they have historically taken.”