In July of this year, the faceless corporation Amazon fastened its grip on Braintree with an approval from the local planning board.

With the special permit given according to the approval, the multi-billion dollar company has been permitted to establish a new warehouse in a former United Liquors building. At first, the proposal seems promising, opening new job opportunities and introducing an ability to ensure faster shipping options to locals. However, these seemingly positive results do not outweigh the negative outcomes that Braintree residents will be doomed to face.

Traffic in Braintree will increase exponentially with the introduction of the warehouse. Although the planning board has demanded 1.2 million dollars from Amazon to put towards traffic mitigation, it is undeniable that the warehouse will ultimately cause more traffic problems that cannot be solved only with money. As a Braintree High School student, I have personally noticed that the introduction of traffic guards only shaves about 5 minutes off of my morning commute each day. The sheer multitude of cars navigating Braintree seems to override any possible improvements that could be made to traffic management. According to the Boston Globe, “peak times” threaten the introduction of “262 cars” which “would come and go each hour.” A dramatic increase to the already unmanageable amount of vehicles driving in Braintree each day does not bode well to the future of daily commutes for Braintree residents.

While the Amazon warehouse does introduce new job opportunities, they are neither of neither beneficial quantity nor quality. The warehouse “could employ 130 when it’s up and running,” but Braintree’s population of 37,156 greatly overshadows the amount of available jobs Amazon presents. Although Braintree’s unemployment rate is only 3.2%, the statistic still leaves around 1,200 unemployed citizens in Braintree. Amazon fails the Braintree area by providing only a fraction of what is needed for local residents to benefit. The pay does not even provide much of a benefit to workers, sustaining “an average hourly wage of about $12” for warehouse employees. The Massachusetts minimum wage is set at $11 per hour, causing Amazon to introduce only a $1 per hour increase over minimum wage jobs. Although the small boost may prove beneficial to some, job conditions in the warehouse are also considered a big deterrent to many. According to an interview with James Bloodworth, a journalist who worked undercover at an Amazon warehouse, employees were demanded to do so much work that “people were told off for taking five minutes to go to the bathroom”.

Despite the detrimental additions the warehouse will bring to Braintree, the local planning board has already approved its addition. However, their agreement “included conditions that would allow them to bring Amazon back in for a meeting if traffic remains an issue.” In order to lessen the inevitable consequences of the building, it is clear Braintree residents must influence their community leaders in order to bring the company back and debate possible improvements to the situation.