The Amazon fulfillment center is thriving in Cayce-West Columbia.

George Schultz is director of operations of the local Amazon facility and a USC graduate. He addressed the West Metro Rotary Club on Aug. 5.
“I’m thankful to be back in South Carolina,” Schultz said.
And thousands  of paycheck earners are glad to be at Amazon.
Schultz said the company provides insurance, a 401k plan, bonuses, and Amazon stock that has increased in value from $280 in 2012 to $760-a-share in 2016.
And at the West Columbia-Cayce facility, Schultz said, more employees have been promoted from hourly pay to salary than any other facility in the Amazon operation.
“But it’s not for everybody,” Schultz said.
He said new employees walking into the 1.2 million sq-ft. facility can be intimidated by the sea of bins and rows of items in the gargantuan warehouse.
If you don’t want a career in the warehouse, Amazon understands, Schultz said. The company- after a year of employment- pays 95-percent tuition for employees who want cycle out of Amazon into another high-demand career.
“We want to help people get to where they want to be,” Schultz said. But if you stay, he said it’s his job to produce leaders. He also said Amazon is always hiring military veterans, and corporation-wide hired 3,800 veterans were hired in 2015, alone.
In addition to the local building in Saxe-Gotha Industrial Park that processes orders for small-box orders, there is a large-item fulfillment center in Spartanburg and a warehouse to process books and digital media in North Charleston. Amazon’s South Carolina workforce tops 5,000.
Schultz said Amazon is one of the US Postal Service’s largest users and the company has bigtime customers including Netflix. It owns Amazon TV, Zappos shoes and clothes, and a Amazon Fresh, a grocery delivery enterprise, among many others. And there is more to come. Schultz said (airborne) drones are used in many other countries- and they will eventually be commonplace for delivery in the United States.
“I love it because it’s the marketplace for ideas,” Schultz said.