What time is it? Is that the right time? Yeah. Oh yea we probably should get going.
Five nights a week from December through February around 6pm, it's time for America Martinez and Shay Machen to put on sturdy shoes.
Thank you, baby.
Throw on one of their CamperForce t-shirts from a previous holiday season.
These are all Phoenix.
Then head to an Amazon returns center in Mississippi for a 10 to 12 hour night shift.
Bye grandma or grandpa.
It's their second shift of the season.
Oh my god, I'm tired already. Your first week, you'll come home and parts of your body hurt that you never even knew could hurt.
For the past four holiday seasons, the couple has worked for a niche Amazon program called CamperForce. It gained notoriety when it was featured in
"Nomadland" as the main character Fern's seasonal gig. The three-month assignments at Amazon fill the family's bank account allowing Machen and
Martinez to only work sporadically at minimum wage jobs the rest of the year while they travel the country in their full-time home: a luxurious RV
they lovingly refer to as The Beast.
You know with our second child, I was able to be home with him for a whole year and that's because of our tiny footprint. That's because we live in an
RV. That's because of Amazon.
Since 2008, Amazon's been recruiting hundreds of RV dwellers for CamperForce each season. It's a small portion of the behemoths 150,000
seasonal workers, but the program has exploded this year. The number of CamperForce sites has doubled since 2020. Now other retailers like JCPenney
and electronic component distributor Digi-Key are offering similar work-camper programs, too.
There's a lot more options that are popping up and I kind of feel like it's all rooting from Amazon. Amazon started it. But where did it come from?
Like I can't see Jeff Bezos in there watching TV going, let's just help out some RVers, you know, like.
I think Amazon is trying to address this general seasonal labor shortage any way they can.
They have the opportunity to do this kind of temp job to make their lifestyle make more sense and Amazon needed temporary workers, so it seems
like a perfect match.
But even as the program swells, campers say Amazon has cut back on benefits, like arranging campsites and paying for them directly.
The benefits have changed over these last few years and I do think that they're probably going to change again next year because this year they had
a lot of problems.
We take you inside the life and work of an Amazon CamperForce family and talk to former Amazonians and labor experts about why the program makes
sense and how it's changed.
At their campground in northern Mississippi, Machen and Martinez have decked the beast out with holiday decorations. There's a playroom filled
with toys for their two kids Oliver and Damien, a full-size bed above it, a propane fireplace and plenty of room for their two dogs Emma and Penny to
lounge.
Your turn Ollie. Seven!
Evenings are spent playing board games around the kitchen table.
Yeah, this one. Or that one. Sorry, sorry!
It's not what people think, we just sit around you know having campfires everyday, but when the weather's nice we do enjoy having some s'mpres
outside. The kids love that.
Is that done now? Let's see.
The family first hit the road in 2016 after losing their jobs at an ambulance company and then losing their home. They decided to live on the
road full time in 2017.
And we don't really see an end in that. Amazon was our first work-camping job. And Amazon showed us that we could live like this, that we could
afford to live like this. And it has been our fallback every single winter.
They were inspired by Machen's parents who've been living the RV life since 2012.
Knock knock. Pizza! Here babies.
We thought they were insane. And within a couple of years we saw their health completely turn around, their relationship completely turn around.
I don't want people to think that we do this because we can't afford something else, you know. I want people to know we do this because we like
to do it and our kids enjoy it, and if they ever say they don't want to do it, we would settle down for them.
Now Machen's parents are parked next door in their own RV, watching the kids while the couple works at night and helping with homeschooling and
meals.
You guys want a little more? We are blessed to watch our babies so much.
Amazon starts the hiring process in July each year, recruiting from booths at popular RV shows like Quartzsite in Arizona, and in online communities
of work campers. This year, Amazon offered part-time and grocery positions for the first time. Candidates must be at least 18, have a high school
diploma or equivalent, be able to stand or walk four to 10 hours a day and lift up to 49 pounds. They must reside in an RV at a campground for the
duration of the assignment and aren't allowed to park overnight on Amazon property. Applicants get to choose their assignment location. This year
Machen and Martinez chose to work at a brand new Amazon returns center just across the Mississippi border from Memphis, Tennessee.
Right now it feels daunting because we're just barely starting.
They get home from their shift at 6am, sleep off the fatigue and get ready to do it all again the next day.
You can do anything temporarily, and you just kind of got to get through it, and I'm looking forward to getting the first paycheck.
Amazon started the CamperForce program in 2008, around the time of the Great Recession, with just one location: Coffeyville, Kansas. Although it
represents a small portion of Amazon's overall seasonal hires, it's continued to grow. Amazon added two new locations in 2009. A decade later
in 2019, CamperForce was at nine sites in three states. Last year it spanned 13 sites in eight states. This year, the program has doubled for a
total of 26 CamperForce sites across 14 states.
Because there are so many folks who during the pandemic chose to retire early, that this is a way of supplementing their income and fitting in with
their lifestyle.
One of the new sites is the returns center in Mississippi, where Machen and Martinez work.
You look at the item, figure out what it is. Is it the right item? Is it opened? Is it closed? Is it used? Is it damaged? The computer will go
through a series of questions that you have to answer about the item. The computer will determine where this item needs to go.
Machen says they get about a minute to evaluate the condition of each returned item. The last three years they worked at fulfillment centers,
picking and packing.
It's bending, it's stooping. It's crouching, it's getting on your hands and knees digging through bins and going through shelves and things falling on
you. Being in a very loud machinery type environment for hours and hours and hours on end with no stimulation other than a beeping hand scanner, you
know, and that scanner haunts you. Like you come home and go to sleep and you still hear it beeping in your brain.
I do lose a little bit of weight, I get a little healthier. I feel a little better after working every season. But it's just, it's a lot when you're
doing it five, six days a week, 10 hours, 12 hours, whatever it is. So it's just exhausting.
When people think about low wage, grueling work, they often think of Amazon. And so I think what Amazon is trying to do is to change its image.
Amazon says the average CamperForce starting salary is $18 an hour plus $120 a week toward campground expenses with a sign-on bonus up to $3,000.
There's overtime pay, an added bump for certain overnight and weekend hours, and an assignment completion bonus of 50 cents for every regular
hour worked and $1 for every overtime hour worked. Martinez and Machen say they make a base salary of $15 an hour and were not offered a sign-on
bonus. Amazon also says CamperForce workers are eligible for basic life and accidental death and dismemberment benefits after 30 days, and medical and
prescription benefits after 90 days. The longest assignments are just over that, ranging from six to 14 weeks.
They definitely do not want to upset their loyal customers, especially the Prime customers at Christmas. It's worth it to just be like nope, we're
gonna pay you more right now, we've got to get this done.
Best thing about it, I'm not gonna lie, that's probably the money. Because us RVers, we go and we like to do a low paying job in the summer and then
we are able to come to Amazon, build up our bank accounts and then go play a little bit and have a little money to do something else.
This year, despite the labor shortage, Amazon has made a series of changes that Machen says are not always good for CamperForce workers.
When we found out the changes with Amazon, it kind of felt like a slap in the face a little bit because, you know, it brought you back to that place
where: are we valued as employees and as temporary associates, or not? Do they really need us, or not? Because those benefits of the program is what
makes it so worthwhile for many of us.
In previous years. Amazon paid campgrounds up to $550 per month for each site its workers occupied. This year, Amazon changed that to $480 per
worker and turned it into taxable income, adding it to weekly paychecks in $120 chunks.
If you're a couple and you only have to pay for one campsite it works out well. But if you're a single, you're a little bit out of money.
Until this year, Amazon lined up campgrounds near each warehouse, making arrangements and payments with campgrounds directly. Starting this year,
campers are responsible for finding their own sites.
There was a lot of people this year I know that dropped out of different facilities because they couldn't find a place. There's a lot of parks that
are 55-plus. There's a lot of parks that are maxed out: they don't have any space. There's a lot of parks that close down in the winter time.
It's pretty much entirely because of the potential liabilities I can see them depositing it directly to the CamperForce participant, rather than to
the RV park, to again provide that distance and say we didn't do that they chose where they were at.
Amazon says the changes were made in response to survey results, in order "to provide all CamperForce employees with more flexibility in selecting
campgrounds."
I guess we kind of got spoiled with Amazon just booking campgrounds for us. This year it was a scramble.
Machen says the site they'd found didn't honor the deal they'd worked out on the phone.
Paycheck is two weeks away. They're like, we need all this money up front. And if Amazon had set that up, I could have gone back to Amazon and been
like, hey, they're saying this. You're seeing this. Can you back me up? But there was no support. There was no backup because Amazon's not a part of
it.
Amazon does say there's a dedicated CamperForce support team with leaders at each site who workers can call for urgent help with anything related to
the program, including campsite issues. All of this happened to Martinez and Machen's family when they got to Memphis on December 10, the night of
the terrible tornadoes that ripped apart towns in the Midwest and South, including an Amazon warehouse in Illinois, where six people were killed.
The family hunkered down that first stormy night at their original campsite.
All of our phones went off, like actually talking to us saying, you know, evacuate and we're like, oh my gosh, like it was terrifying. Absolutely
terrifying.
In the morning, they packed up and went to a more affordable campground. The next night, they started their first shift at Amazon.
It's not quite as wonderful as it used to be. But still, they're opening up more locations. So I guess it's kind of give and take. Because originally
with the program, they were bringing CamperForce people only to very, very cold, harsh climates, in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. And now, you
know, we have options in California. We have options in Oregon. We have options in Arizona.
Another change as Amazon's grown is that its peak season jobs like CamperForce have earlier, less flexible start dates. For nomadic workers,
that means they can no longer work both Amazon and the beet harvest, which employs thousands of work campers each October.
You used to be able to do both and people would make a lot of money. So it is affecting a lot of people that do the harvest. They can't do both
because the start dates are now earlier: September, October. Or if you want to do it, I guess you have to do a returns season which will start in
December, but then you have a gap.
Another change involves the workers themselves, especially since the pandemic. In the early days, many were retirees.
I started when I was like 30. So I was the youngest person there and everybody else was 60s and over. And now I've seen a few, you know,
families our age. I've seen people younger than us. And there's definitely more younger people coming into it.
Despite the demanding physical toll of the job, people often return year after year.
I like coming back. I feel like I make good money. And I like the experience of working in the warehouse. And so that's why I come back.
Other retailers are following Amazon's lead. JCPenney launched a Camp Crew program in 2019, hiring up to 100 employees a year at eight U.S.
warehouses. The three- to four-month assignments during the holiday season start at an average $18 nn hour and include a $100 weekly stipend toward RV
site reservations. Digi-Key started a work-camper program this summer for the first time, hiring more than 250 campers to pick and pack at its
electronic component warehouse in Minnesota for $18 to $20 an hour. The gig includes a fully paid prearranged RV site and flexible timing that still
allows campers to work the beet harvest.
She's waiting for it.
Oh, nom nom nom.
As they hang out before their next shift in Mississippi, Machen, Martinez and Oliver Damien, Emma and Penny are looking forward to a couple months of
work-free travel when CamperForce ends in February.
And everyday that we go to work is one day down.
Then it's to Massachusetts to work a campground in April and eventually back to Amazon again next holiday season.
I love that as a mom, you're picking toys and Christmas gifts and holiday decorations. I feel like Santa Clause. Like I'm a part of this holiday.
We love you. Love you. Bye sweetheart. I love you. Have a good night. Bye. Goodnight buddy.
Amazon will open the CamperForce 2022 applications in January, giving a one-week headstart to those who've worked the program in previous years.
They complain all season long about how much they hurt, they don't want to come back, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the season, last day,
everybody's hugging each other: we'll see you next season. They always come back.
Love you too baby. See you tomorrow.