This story is featured in CityBeat’s May 3 print edition.
Amazon Air Hub workers at KCVG have a new playbook to consider in their push to unionize the mega-company’s largest Air Hub.
Ramp workers at DHL Express at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, Kentucky voted on April 28 to join the Teamsters union. The final tally was 505 “Yes” votes to join the union and 287 “No” votes, according to Teamsters organizers.
Across the street in the same air field are the workers at Amazon’s KCVG Air Hub – the largest Amazon Air Hub in the world. The KCVG employees started their union drive in November, hoping to achieve higher pay and better benefits for the 4,000 employees who load, unload and process 30% of the nation’s Amazon orders.
KCVG union organizer Griffin Ritze told CityBeat that Amazon Air Hub ramp workers do much of the same tasks as the DHL employees who just voted to unionize, which he said is a good sign for the union effort at KCVG.
“A victory for DHL workers is a victory for workers at KCVG. This is a historic opportunity for all air freight workers,” Ritze said.
The 1,100 ramp associates at DHL is a small number compared to the massive number of Amazon Air Hub employees across the street, making it harder for Amazon organizers to recruit and retain card-carrying union supporters. Ritze said KCVG union organizers are doing “wall-to-wall” organizing, meaning they want to fold all 4,000 of the Air Hub’s ramp and sort employees into the Amazon Labor Union.
“I think at Amazon there’s a lot more labor sharing that occurs between these different departments and sections of the facility. We just have to go all the way,” he said.
Another obstacle Amazon organizers say they face is union-busting tactics from Amazon, including recent workplace meetings that organizers believe violate federal law.
KCVG is the first Air Hub in the country to see a public organizing campaign, making it a flashpoint for Amazon critics and defenders alike. Union organizers have filed a dozen complaints with the National Labor Relations Board over Amazon’s actions at KCVG since November 2022.
In one of the most recent, union organizers allege the company is illegally requiring employees to attend presentations with misleading information.
Ritze said Amazon started bringing in corporate employees known as “employee relations managers” to the Air Hub earlier this month. The employees, whom Amazon confirmed to CityBeat are full-time Amazon employees and not consultants, hold up to four meetings a day at the Air Hub, which are known in union circles as “captive audience meetings.”
Captive audience meetings
The meetings are commonly held by employers to dissuade employees from unionizing, but national labor laws prevent companies from threatening or pressuring employees outright during these sessions.
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 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. Any time that you’re told to scan in for something, you’re given the impression that it’s mandatory,” he said.
Ritze also said a manager 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 National Labor Relations Board complaint.
“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 were 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.
Video provided to CityBeat by an Amazon employee shows one of the 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 named 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 makes its move
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. Employees currently make an average of $19 per hour, and would need to work at the company for six years or more to receive 120 hours of annual paid vacation time, or 15 days.
Air Hub employees started union efforts in November after management announced there would be no peak pay for the 2022 holiday rush. Peak pay in 2021 was an extra $2 per hour — which workers say helps compensate for what they face when Amazon package volumes swell and employees are required to perform mandatory overtime with a freeze on paid time off.
In the last two months, the unionizing campaign has heated up — with help from union leaders outside Cincinnati.
On March 18, organizers held a rally at the CVG Air Hub to announce a partnership with the national Amazon Labor Union (ALU).
ALU president Chris Smalls and vice president Derrick Palmer led the first-ever successful union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, which voted to formally unionize in April 2022. While Amazon continues to fight the win in court, Smalls and Palmer are helping Amazon facilities to strengthen their union drives across the U.S.
At the rally, some workers carried signs that said “UNION YES!” and “Unionize Amazon Everywhere.” Organizers flashed their signs to passing cars and trucks, some honking in support, including three Amazon Prime delivery trucks.
In a statement emailed to CityBeat after the rally, Amazon’s Paradis said the majority of the rally’s 75 attendees were outside organizers.
“Despite a very small gathering initiated and mostly attended by outside organizers, our employees at KCVG continued to do what they do every day, deliver for our customers. While we’re always listening and looking at ways to improve, we remain proud of the competitive pay, comprehensive benefits, and engaging, safe work experience we provide our team at KCVG,” Paradis said.
The rally was originally planned to take place in the facility’s parking lot, but site security blocked off the entrance near Day One Drive to anyone who was not an Air Hub worker.
Paradis said the site was blocked off as a safety measure, and that the facility parking lot is never open to non-credentialed visitors.
“Our priority is to ensure the safety and privacy of our employees. As always, non-credentialed employees, community members and media must follow our standard process which prohibits the public from entering private property,” Paradis said.
The day before the rally, Amazon sent all KCVG Air Hub employees a text message that warned employees to protect their “personal information” from union organizers. “It’s important to remember you have no obligation to speak to any person or group, including a union organizer,” the company said in a statement linked in the text message.
The rally marked the start of KCVG’s union card authorization drive. If enough KCVG employees sign a union authorization card, the next step would be an election held by the National Labor Relations Board where KCVG workers could vote to formally unionize. A win would mean the company would be required to engage in good-faith talks about the union’s demands, though Amazon could try to fight a win in court.
Experienced helpers
One of the rally speakers in March was Smalls, who famously helped unionize the company’s Staten Island facility. Organizers told CityBeat that Smalls got past the security checkpoint at the Air Hub to help run a union sign-up table outside the facility’s doors, but Amazon’s site security asked Smalls and other organizers to leave the facility due to “safety and privacy” concerns.
“I was an entry-level worker when I got hired at Amazon in 2015. I was making $12.75. I know the ins and outs of this company, I know what you guys go through on a daily basis, I know the grievances, I know the hardships,” Smalls told the crowd, with police officers standing by in case organizers tried to advance closer to the facility. “You are the ones that deserve the money we make this company. We have to fight for it, they’re not going to give it to us.”
Amazon has sought to discredit Smalls as a union organizer based on the circumstances surrounding his termination with the Amazon facility in New York.
“Mr. Smalls, a former employee at a fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York, was terminated for putting the health and safety of others at risk and violations of his terms of his employment. Mr. Smalls received multiple warnings for violating COVID-19 social distancing guidelines, and despite instruction to stay home with pay, he came onsite putting the teams at risk,” Paradis said. “Smalls has no connection with KCVG and despite informing him that he was not permitted on our property, he disregarded the safety and privacy of our employees and the security protocols at our site.
Palmer told CityBeat ahead of the rally that the union has sought to help support other Amazon warehouses that are organizing across the country, but this is their first time helping to organize an Air Hub.
“That’s why we’re going out there, to understand the dynamics of what’s going on. The workers, the ones who are actually working at the Air Hub, are the experts. We’re learning,” Palmer said.
The pair acknowledge that they were underdogs when they first began organizing in Staten Island.
“At the beginning of our union campaign we reached out to local officials, but people didn’t really take it seriously,” Palmer said. “We didn’t really get that support until after we won the election, that’s when we got the support. There are politicians that do support unions, you just have to really make sure they’re there for the workers and not just there to make themselves look like they care for the workers.”
Smalls added, “We don’t want to put ourselves in a category, because we understand that not all Amazon workers are on the left or on the right. We don’t know what they are because they come from different places all over the country, all over the world. We’re talking about Kentucky, which we already know is a conservative state, it’s a Right to Work state, we can’t go in there with an agenda that’s political, we have to keep the issues work-related.”
Ritze said at the March rally that Air Hub workers will need help from the public to successfully unionize.
“It’s going to take the entire labor movement, it’s going to take everyone out here today and much more,” Ritze said through a megaphone.
Supporters of the union effort at Amazon think KCVG could be a major turning point for the labor movement at large.
“The launch of card collection at KCVG is a moment of historic significance, not just for the unionization of Amazon but for the wider labor movement,” said Greyson Van Arsdale, a volunteer supporting KCVG’s union effort. “If the campaign at KCVG is successful, it will only be the second unionized Amazon facility in the country, and it will concretely demonstrate a method to building a labor movement that can unionize all of Amazon and beyond.”
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This article appears in Apr 19 – May 2, 2023.