This story is featured in CityBeat's May 3 print edition.
While higher pay is a conversation DHL employees want to have with management, safer working conditions is the most pressing issue for employees who voted to join the Teamsters union on April 28.
Workers told CityBeat that ramp associates are paid as low as $20 per hour to have life-threatening jobs loading and unloading nearly 400,000 pounds of cargo per day using equipment they described as dangerous or outdated.
Garrett Schwing, a ramp lead for DHL-CVG, told CityBeat that employees have to fend for themselves in a dangerous environment.
“We have to have absolutely better safety policies than just, ‘Oh, take care of yourself, be careful and don’t get hurt,’ that’s not good enough for an air hub,” Schwing said.
In 2022, there were at least 22 workplace injuries that required transport to a hospital or emergency room, according to Kenton County Airport Board records. Injuries included broken, crushed and dislocated limbs. Records show one worker suffered a “degloving” of his arm, an injury where the skin and tissue get ripped away from the bone.
Schwing told CityBeat that understaffing and lack of training are leading to serious workplace injuries at DHL.
“We’re solving problems for our company that aren’t even taught in on-the-job training. We figure it out just by conversations and off-hand on-the-job experience,” he said. “A company of our size cannot afford to do this anymore. They cannot afford to put people’s lives in danger and say, ‘you’ll figure it out.’”
Teamster organizers have filed 18 Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges against DHL based on retaliation against union supporters and working conditions. All ULPs are still pending investigation by the National Labor Relations Board.
DHL did not respond to CityBeat’s request for comment on the union vote or the allegations of unsafe workplace conditions for DHL employees.
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