Photo Aidan Mahoney
Amazon Air Hub union organizer Griffin Ritze addresses a crowd of Air Hub workers and supporters during a March 18 rally.
The unionizing employees of Amazon’s largest Air Hub, KCVG in Hebron, Kentucky, allege the company is illegally requiring employees to attend presentations with misleading information about unions.
Union organizer Griffin Ritze said Amazon started bringing in corporate employees known as “Employee Relations Managers” to the Air Hub on April 3. The employees, who Amazon confirmed to CityBeat are full-time Amazon employees and not consultants, hold up to four meetings a day at the Air Hub, known as “captive audience meetings.”
Captive audience meetings
The meetings are commonly held by employers to dissuade employees from unionizing, but there are national labor laws that prevent companies from threatening or pressuring employees outright during captive audience meetings.
Seth Goldstein, a lawyer representing the Amazon Labor Union, told CityBeat that employers are required to tell employees that meetings about unions are always optional.
“In order to meet with the employee about the union, either as a captive audience or one on one, the employer now has to the say to the employee, ‘Do you want to attend this meeting? You don’t have to if you don’t want, and if you don’t attend it, you’re not going to be disciplined for not attending,'” he said. “They cannot be compelled anymore to go to that meeting.”
“In order to meet with the employee about the union, either as a captive audience or one on one, the employer now has to the say to the employee, ‘Do you want to attend this meeting? You don’t have to if you don’t want, and if you don’t attend it, you’re not going to be disciplined for not attending,'” he said. “They cannot be compelled anymore to go to that meeting.”
Ritze told CityBeat that Amazon frames the meetings as required.
“A manager will come find you and say, ‘Hey, we’re having this employee relations-related meeting at this time,’ and then they’ll labor-track you. You’ll scan into the meeting and scan out so your time’s accounted for. Anytime that you’re told to scan in for something, you’re given the impression that it’s mandatory,” he said.
Griffin also said a manager named Jordan (last name unavailable) told a group of employees on April 10 that they were required to attend a captive audience meeting, which has prompted union organizers to file a complaint against the company with the National Labor Relations Board. The complaint is just one of a dozen made against the Air Hub from union organizers since November 2022.
“I was talking to a crew this morning that went to [a meeting] and they were like, ‘Yeah we all said we didn’t want to go, and they said we have to,’” Ritze said.
Amazon did not respond to CityBeat’s questions about the manager telling employees outright that the meetings was required, but did provide this statement:
“It’s our employees’ choice whether or not to join a union. It always has been. Holding meetings about unions with employees is a process that’s been legally recognized for more than 70 years. Like many other companies, we hold these meetings because it’s important that everyone understands the facts about joining a union and the election process itself,” said Mary Kate Paradis, a public relations manager for Amazon.
After the meeting is let out, an employee can be heard asking why employees weren’t told the presentations are not mandatory to attend. The employee can be heard telling a presenter that withholding that information amounts to union busting.
Inside the meetings
Video provided to CityBeat by an Amazon employee shows one of these meetings from start to finish. At no point did a presenting employee relations manager say the meeting was optional for employees.
In the video, an employee relations manager by the name of Shawn Baxter describes a union as a business.
“A union is business, and just like any other business you either sell goods or you sell services,” Baxter says in the video, wearing a fluorescent orange work vest and jeans. “And in this case, a union sells a service, and that service is called representation. So, in exchange for money – which they have a fancy word for, called ‘dues’ – in exchange for dues or money, they provide the service of representing you. Rather than speaking for yourself, you have a union representative who is speaking on behalf of you.”
After the meeting is let out, an employee can be heard asking why employees weren’t told the presentations are not mandatory to attend. The employee can be heard telling a presenter that withholding that information amounts to union busting.
The presenter responds by raising his voice saying, “it’s not union busting!”
Amazon did not respond to CityBeat’s request for information about employee relations managers’ duties outside of holding captive audience meetings.
The union's demands
Union organizers are demanding a $30 hourly wage for all of the Air Hub's 4,000 employees, as well as 180 hours of paid time off and union representation at disciplinary hearings. KCVG is the first Air Hub to publicly organize in the country.
Air Hub employees started union efforts in November after upper management announced there would be no peak pay for the 2022 holiday rush. Peak pay in 2021 was an extra $2 per hour. Workers spoke with CityBeat in December about challenges of working during the holiday season when Amazon package volumes swell and employees were required to perform mandatory overtime with a freeze on paid time off.
Air Hub employees started union efforts in November after upper management announced there would be no peak pay for the 2022 holiday rush. Peak pay in 2021 was an extra $2 per hour. Workers spoke with CityBeat in December about challenges of working during the holiday season when Amazon package volumes swell and employees were required to perform mandatory overtime with a freeze on paid time off.
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