Local Amazon fulfillment center hires 600 for holiday rush

GAINES TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Time is running out to get the Christmas presents under the tree and Amazon workers in West Michigan are busy shipping out orders.

The Amazon fulfillment center near Caledonia has additional employees working to keep up with demand.

“Amazon as a company committed to bringing on 250,000 employees for holiday hiring needs across the company and right here in the Grand Rapids area we were able to bring on over 600 employees,” Lexi Cooley, a senior human resources manager at the site, said.

Robots bring the items to workers who scan them and place them into a tote.

A conveyor belt moves the product to be sorted and then packaged for shipment.

“We’ve got currently about 2,500 employees and 6,000 robotic drive units all just working together,” Maxwell Caywood, a senior operations manager, said.

Caywood says the holiday season and Prime Day are the busiest times of the year for orders.

“We usually process between half a million to a million units of product each day in and out of the building,” Caywood said.

Planning for the holiday shipping season is an important part of the process, according to general manager Matt Moss.

“We start early in the year planning for each peak season making sure that we have the right number of people in the building, (and) the supply lines are all set up correctly. It’s what I would imagine running a small city would be like,” Moss said.

Moss says helping spread holiday cheer is what the work is all about.

“Our workers in this facility really buy into that, really get that festive spirit this time of year. We try to keep it fun even though it’s a lot of work,” Moss said.

“It’s always going to be rewarding because we know that we’re putting something under someone’s Christmas tree or fulfilling an order for the holiday season,” Caywood said.

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