Riverside Amazon Walkout Raises Question: Can Workers Afford Housing Where They Work? “Absolutely Not.”

An early-morning walkout at Amazon’s DJT6 delivery station in Riverside on Dec. 16 thrust a basic question into the center of the region’s holiday shipping rush: Can the workers who move the boxes afford to live anywhere near the jobs that depend on them?

For Maricruz Delgadillo, 26, the math feels unforgiving. Delgadillo, a warehouse associate at DJT6, said she wakes up around 2 AM to clock in at 3:20 AM, moving packages that can weigh up to 50 pounds and helping set up routes for delivery drivers. During peak season, she said, Amazon adds mandatory over-time—an extra hour and an extra day—pushing her schedule to nine-hour shifts, six days a week.

“It kind of just feels like I don’t really have a choice,” Delgadillo said of joining the organizing effort. “If I really want better for myself and my peers, this is what we have to do.”

Teamsters Local 1932 Communications Coordinator Robert Gonzalez said the action at DJT6 is part of a broader organizing push that will continue throughout the week. “Today it was a walk out,” Gonzalez said. “The rest of the week they’re going to be launching their union campaign and gathering signatures.”

Delgadillo’s description of the job painted a workplace defined by speed, crowding and fatigue—especially in December. She said peak season nearly doubles volume, turning aisles into bottlenecks as multiple workers push carts of totes through tight lanes.

“It’s just, like, super clogged,” she said. “We bump into each other with carts. … We’re kind of just, on top of each other.”

The physical environment, she said, swings from freezing overnight shifts—“We all have sweaters on”—to scorching summers she described as “gross,” when open dock doors pull in outside heat and warehouse air turns “humid and musty.”

Delgadillo described workers as being “herded” and managers yelling when breaks run even seconds over. “At Amazon, they treat us like we’re just a bunch of numbers,” she said. “They hire and fire us, like we don’t rely on these wages to pay for the things that we need.”

She put her hourly pay in the low $20s and said Tier 1 workers are capped at $23 an hour. Asked if an Amazon warehouse wage is enough to rent—or buy—in the Inland Empire, she didn’t hesitate.

“No, absolutely not,” Delgadillo said.

Delgadillo said some co-workers are homeless or juggling multiple jobs to stay afloat. “I don’t even have kids or anything, and I’m barely making it,” she said, as she explained that she rents an apartment in Moreno Valley with a roommate, to offset costs. 

Economic data helps explain why the answer comes so quickly. The average hourly wage for workers employed in the Riverside area is about $30.90, according to federal labor data—well above the roughly $22 an hour Delgadillo said many Amazon associates make. 

Housing costs widen the gap. Average rent in Riverside is about $2,247 a month, with one-bedroom apartments averaging roughly $1,948 and two-bedrooms around $2,386, according to RentCafe. Many landlords commonly require tenants to earn 2.5 times the monthly rent, a standard that would mean roughly $4,870 a month to qualify for the average one-bedroom and about $5,965 for the average two-bedroom—before taxes. 

At $22 an hour, a full-time worker earns about $3,813 a month before taxes—below that common one-bedroom threshold—and about $45,760 a year. Even during peak season, when Delgadillo said hours rise sharply, she described staying financially pinned down.

Homeownership looks even further away. Redfin reported Riverside’s median sale price was about $655,000 in November 2025. 

Delgadillo also described how the cost of living shows up in basic choices around food. She said she and many co-workers rely heavily on fast food because long, early shifts leave little time or energy to cook, and she said her diet declined after returning to work for Amazon. She said grocery shopping has become increasingly difficult as prices rise, describing moments when staples like eggs became unaffordable and forced her to narrow purchases to the bare minimum. She said she would purchase more fresh vegetables and healthier options if she could afford them.

Now, the clash between paychecks and prices lands inside one of the most valuable companies on earth. Amazon’s market value in December 2025 hovers near $2.4 trillion, while founder Jeff Bezos’ net worth was estimated at about $235 billion. 

Teamsters Local 1932 Principal Officer Randy Korgan called it “a failure as Southern California’s largest employer” and said workers are acting “to demand better working conditions, better pay, and the dignity and respect” they believe they’ve earned.

Samuel Padilla, another Amazon DJT6 worker, said workers are organizing so they can “have a real say in our working conditions and stable means to provide for ourselves and our families,” adding, “Amazon keeps pushing us to our limits, and we’re done being ignored.”

Korgan put the housing question more bluntly: “If you’re going to anchor down and put in thousands of jobs, don’t you think you should pay people enough to buy a home in the area you’re living and working in?” 

Amazon disputed the scale of the action. Spokesperson Eileen Hards said less than 1% of workers walked out. Amazon has also said its pay is competitive, stating that average base wages for fulfillment and transportation employees exceed $23 an hour, with total compensation averaging more than $30 an hour when benefits are included. 

Gonzalez argued “competitive” depends on what it’s being measured against—especially in a region where rent and home prices have climbed faster than wages. He pointed to unionized UPS workers as a comparison, saying Amazon can afford a higher standard. Public reporting on the UPS-Teamsters contract has said top delivery drivers’ total compensation can reach about $170,000 annually when wages and benefits are combined. 

Gonzalez also responded to online criticism of the organizing effort, including a comment on an IECN Instagram post regarding the walk out where the user wrote, “An unskilled expendable workforce can’t make demands.” Gonzalez said every worker has a skill, including the physical and logistical demands of lifting, sorting, loading, and moving freight that customers and businesses depend on. He argued that the “unskilled” label is often used to devalue workers and justify low pay, even as many people avoid the job because of the harsh conditions and demanding pace. He added that many workers land in warehouse jobs not because they lack ambition, but because rising costs and barriers to education push people into whatever work is available, and that does not make them expendable.

As the organizing continues, Delgadillo said the drive is about more than one facility—and more than one December. “We’re not the first Amazon that’s getting unionized, and it’s not the last,” she said. “We need to be given what we deserve, which is a livable wage, safer working conditions, and respect.”