What's inside the box?

It all seems innocent enough: you click "Buy Now", and a package arrives at your door two days later. Bright blue tape on the cardboard, a cheery message, nuisance free packaging. Inexpensive, convenient, fast: That’s the Amazon promise.

That package was prepared at and shipped from one of 110 "fulfillment centers" (warehouses) across the United States, most of which Amazon has built in the last decade.(1) Amazon is currently planning to build nearly three dozen more, including a new flagship center in downtown San Francisco.

What if Amazon's fulfillment centers are being built by a firm that is being run by a firm that has numerous ties to a breakaway religious sect with a history of child abuse, child neglect, and child marriage? The religious sect in question is the Fundamentalist Church of the Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a group that splintered off of the mainstream Mormon religion so that they could practice plural marriage.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Fundamentalist Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) as “[s]till actively practicing polygamy more than a century after the mainstream Mormon Church abandoned the practice... a white supremacist, homophobic, anti-government, totalitarian cult.”(2)

An investigation into Amazon's fulfillment centers raises several questions about ties between a prime fulfillment center contractor and the FLDS:

Is one of the construction companies Amazon uses to build its fulfillment centers run by someone who was an officer at a company that violated child labor laws by forcing the children of FLDS members to work for low wages and for longer than the law allows?

Is an officer at that construction company involved in a criminal syndicate that gave preference to members of the FLDS, which has a history of child abuse, including forcing teenage girls to marry the group’s older men?

Was yet another officer in that construction company a member of the FLDS when it was raided by Texas authorities because of suspected child abuse?

If the answer to even one of these questions is YES, it's a terrible abdication of responsibility by Amazon that raises an even more important series of questions:

Does Amazon do any due diligence on the companies it brings into our communities to build their fulfillment centers?

If Amazon knew about the history of the company they hired to build their fulfillment centers, why did it award them lucrative contracts instead of hiring a more responsible company?

Key Background

Is one of the construction companies Amazon uses to build its fulfillment centers by someone whose work history includes a company sued for child labor violations?

Building Zone Industries (BZI), a Utah construction firm heavily involved in the construction of Amazon’s fulfillment centers throughout the western United States, is run by CEO James Barlow.(3) Is BZI’s CEO the same James Barlow who was an officer at another firm, Phaze Concrete, which the U.S. Department of Labor declared to have violated child labor laws?

According to the Department of Labor, Phaze Concrete employed children in dangerous construction jobs in order to exploit cheap labor, including excavation, tying iron rebar, pouring concrete, operating heavy equipment, and hauling gravel.

The Department of Labor argued that Phaze Concrete’s conduct “infiltrates to an entire community of children who are exposed to and affected by Defendant’s egregious employment practices.... [Phaze Concrete’s] labor pool comes from the FLDS Church, including the minor children it employs, and its profits are returned to the FLDS Church.”(4)

James Barlow is listed as an officer in official records for Phaze Concrete. One of the records includes a reference to BZI in Barlow’s profile, which seems to confirm the link.(5)

Is an officer at that construction company involved in a criminal syndicate that gave preference to members of a bigamist sect with a history of child abuse, including forcing teenage girls to marry the group’s older men?

David Darger is listed as the Safety Director for Building Zone Industries.(6) Research shows that someone named David Darger was the former Town Manager of Colorado City, Arizona, who pled guilty in March 2013 to “two counts of solicitation of misuse of public money, which occurred Dec. 29, 2005, and April 3, 2009. He had been charged with 36 felony counts including violating the duties as custodian of public funds and participating in a criminal syndicate.”(7)

David Darger was also Colorado City’s Town Manager when Colorado City and the City of Hildale, Utah, were under investigation by the Department of Justice for being “engaged in a pattern or practice of illegal discrimination against individuals who are not members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” which is a separatist sect that broke off from the Mormon church because their members wanted to practice polygamy.(8)

Was another officer in Amazon’s construction firm a member of the FLDS when it was raided by Texas authorities because of suspected child abuse?

Building Zone Industries lists a Joe Jessop as a Project Manager on their website.(9) This Joe Jessop is more than likely the same Joseph Steed Jessop Sr. who was a resident of the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, where the FLDS committed unlawful acts against teenage girls.

Jessop and his wife Lori were present at the YFZ Ranch when “officials with Texas Child Protective Services said they found a ‘pervasive pattern of sexual abuse that puts every child at the ranch at risk.’" More than 400 children were removed from the ranch in 2008 “based on reports that minors possibly were being sexually abused.”(10)

After the raid, “investigators eventually found that two girls living at YFZ were twelve when they were ordered to marry, three were thirteen, two were fourteen, and five were fifteen. Seven of those girls had one or more children. In the end, eleven FLDS men were given prison sentences for crimes related to bigamy and sexual assault.” (11)

The Big Questions

Does Amazon do any due diligence on the companies it brings into our communities to build their fulfillment centers?

If Amazon knew about the history of the company they hired to build their fulfillment centers, why did it award them lucrative contracts instead of hiring a more responsible company?

Amazon has been provided with this information, but they continue to turn a blind eye to BZI’s dark, criminal affiliations. Even today, it’s possible that BZI is still doing business with Amazon, coming into communities all over the United States to build Amazon fulfillment centers.

Please help Amazon do the right thing. Reach out to Amazon’s board and tell them that CRIME AGAINST CHILDREN ISN’T PRIME and to stop funding child abuse.

SIGN

The Amazon Board of Directors

as of Dec. 21st, 2020

Jeff Bezos	Keith Alexander	Rosalind G. Brewer	Jamie S. Gorelick
Daniel P. Huttenlocher	Judith A. McGrath	Indra K. Nooyi	Jonathan J. Rubinstein
Thomas O. Ryder	Patricia Q. Stonesifer	Wendell P. Weeks