‘Nomadland’ spotlights Amazon’s RV workforce — here’s what it’s really like

In 2017, Shay Martinez-Machen was having an identification disaster. She was pregnant along with her son, and the non-public ambulance firm she’d labored at for a decade went bankrupt, immediately leaving her and not using a house or a job.

“I went from corporate America to a stay-at-home mom overnight,” Martinez-Machen, 33, mentioned in an interview. “I didn’t know who I was.”

Inspired by her dad and mom, who had develop into “full-time nomads,” Martinez-Machen, her spouse America, and their two youngsters determined to hit the street in an RV. That summer time trip has since was a years-long way of life touring across the nation, choosing up short-term jobs for months at a time.

But every year since 2017, they’ve spent just a few months working for one of many largest employers within the United States: Amazon.

Martinez-Machen and her spouse are amongst tons of of Americans who work at Amazon three months out of the yr as a part of the corporate’s CamperForce program. Launched in 2008, CamperForce recruits RVers and van-dwellers for short-term jobs to shore up its workforce throughout the busy vacation buying interval. 

While CamperForce has been round for greater than a decade, this system has been solid into the highlight after it was featured within the Golden Globe-nominated movie “Nomadland.”

The film, based mostly on a 2017 ebook by Jessica Bruder, stars Frances McDormand as Fern, who lives a transient life on the street in her van, touring from one job to the following, together with as an Amazon warehouse employee in Nevada. Fern picks and packs Prime orders earlier than heading again to her passenger van, the place she folds laundry and cooks ramen noodles on a scorching plate. The scenes had been filmed in an actual achievement middle in Fernley, Nevada, which has since closed and been moved to Reno, in accordance Bob Wells, 65, a real-life nomad who performs himself in “Nomadland.”  

The CamperForce expertise depicted in “Nomadland” is a reasonably lifelike portrayal of what Martinez-Machen and others expertise every year. CamperForce attracts nomads from all corners of the nation, many of them elderly, however more and more youthful and with households in tow, to a rising variety of Amazon warehouses in Arizona, Kentucky, Nevada, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, amongst different states. 

Only a handful of Amazon warehouses participated within the CamperForce program in its early days. This yr, Amazon will supply CamperForce positions at 27 services.

Just like the remainder of Amazon’s tons of of 1000’s of warehouse employees, CamperForce staff work 10- to 12-hour shifts inside sprawling achievement facilities, packing, choosing, stowing and receiving packages. 

They earn $15 an hour plus additional time, paid out in weekly paychecks, plus a further $550 stipend to cowl among the price of a close-by campsite with RV hookups to electrical energy and water. They also can get an “assignment completion bonus” on the finish of the season that pays 50 cents for each common hour labored and $1.00 for each additional time hour labored, in line with a promotional video posted by Amazon. Many of them sport t-shirts, lanyards and different gear with the CamperForce brand — a roving RV with Amazon’s well-known smile.

Workers also can get entry to medical and prescription advantages after 90 days, however relying on the size of their place, some employees may not be eligible. 

Amazon mentioned it created the CamperForce program as a versatile work choice for RVers throughout peak season. Many CamperForce staff “return year-after-year” to work at Amazon, Amazon spokesperson Andre Woodson informed CNBC in a press release.

“We are proud of our innovative CamperForce program and the opportunities it offers for individuals to combine earning extra money during the holiday season with RV camping,” Woodson mentioned.

Picking up work at Amazon is normally one cease on the everyday jobs circuit for touring laborers, sometimes called “workampers,” Wells mentioned in an interview.

“You can be a campground host in the summer. When that’s over, you leave almost immediately and you go and work the beet harvest for three weeks,” he mentioned. “Then from there you go to Amazon.”

Wells, who started residing in a van in 1995, has by no means labored at Amazon regardless of all of his years on the street. But he has met many nomads, usually aged, who’ve relied on CamperForce for short-term employment. 

“It’s hard work. No one would question that,” Wells mentioned. “You’re on your feet 10 hours a day and then with mandatory overtime it’s 12 hours a day. For old hips, knees and elbows, that’s hard.”

Wells moved right into a field van with little or no cash after going by means of a divorce. Although it was a traumatic transition, he disagrees with the concept monetary want is the primary purpose nomads take to a life on the street. Once many nomads end the six-month job circuit, they spend time touring. “You’ve got the rest of the year that’s yours,” he mentioned.

Martinez-Machen mentioned she usually felt like full-time Amazon warehouse employees did not perceive what the CamperForce program was about. Some of her coworkers thought that CamperForce staff are “all sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya,” Martinez-Machen mentioned.

“There was this impression that we’re homeless and we’re transients and we don’t have a safe place to go home to,” Martinez-Machen mentioned. “But my kids are here with me. My house is here. I have a kitchen, a bathroom, a bed and a heater.”

In the workamper group, CamperForce jobs are sometimes in excessive demand, with positions usually filling up inside weeks after they’re posted on-line, employees informed CNBC. But it’s positively robust work.

Ryan Ginther mentioned he is uncertain if he’d choose up seasonal work at Amazon once more. Ginther labored the night time shift final December as a part of the CamperForce program at an Amazon warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon.

He would head to work round 6:15 p.m. and “work through the night” till about 6:00 within the morning, mentioned Ginther, who lives in an RV along with his spouse, Summer, and their pet pug. “That was something I don’t really want to do again,” he mentioned.

“It was such long shifts and then it was a 30 minute commute either way,” Summer Ginther mentioned. “We didn’t see each other at all.”

Ginther mentioned he had some expertise doing bodily labor earlier than he joined Amazon, however had by no means labored in a warehouse earlier than. “I didn’t know what to expect going in, but eventually found the job pretty easy,” he added.

For Martinez-Machen, the transition from managing 150 staff to residing on the street and dealing in a warehouse was way more dramatic. But 5 years on, Martinez-Machen mentioned she and her spouse have tailored to the workamper cycle of seasonal jobs, with Amazon serving because the couple’s “sole source of income and our plans for the fall and winter every single year.”

“We’ve gone back, regardless of the complaints and the sore feet and everything else that comes along with it,” Martinez-Machen mentioned. “I think that’s a common experience.”

Martinez-Machen mentioned she usually crosses paths with CamperForce employees who, although they’d a tough time at Amazon, will nonetheless return the next season at a website in one other state.

“There are people who say, ‘I hate this place, I don’t want to come back,'” she mentioned. “And then at the end of it, they’ll say, ‘Well, where are you going next year? I’ll see you there.'”