Grapevine

Amazon demands a lot from its drivers: Now they're pushing back

Rajpal Singh sweltered on his routes, delivering hundreds of packages every day for Amazon to homes on twisty dirt roads in the hills and valleys surrounding Lancaster and Palmdale, California. Temperatures in his van commonly climbed above 100 degrees.

The $19.75 hourly wage Singh said he was paid by Battle-Tested Strategies, a delivery company that counted Amazon as its only client, didn't make up for the grind of the job.

"None of us felt we were being paid fairly," Singh said of other drivers at the company. "That's barely a living wage. Anyone who lives in L.A. County knows the truth, that most of us are going around figuring out which bills we are going to pay, how we are going to make sure there's food on our table."

Fed up, Singh and other drivers banded together. They demanded better working conditions and later took steps toward unionizing. Not long after Amazon officials got wind of the agitation, the retail giant canceled its contract with the company, forcing it to close and putting Singh and the others out of work.

Until getting laid off, Singh was part of an army of drivers who make up the backbone of Amazon, a juggernaut that totaled nearly $575 billion in revenue last year. A ubiquitous presence on city, suburban and country roads across the U.S., they race daily in a nonstop push to keep pace with the insatiable demand for doorstep delivery that Amazon itself helped create.