KCVG is Amazon’s largest air hub in the world, processing more than 30% of the world’s Amazon packages. Photo: amazonunionkcvg on Instagram

Employees at the Amazon air hub at KCVG Airport in Hebron, Kentucky, will go without peak pay for a second holiday season in a row.

“There are no peak pay, no bonuses, no one who is hired on is receiving hiring bonuses,” said KCVG employee Jordan Quinn. “We’re just expected to work six days a week, nine-hour days, and we’re not receiving extra to match the volume we are pushing out this season.”

KCVG is Amazon’s largest air hub in the world, processing more than 30% of the world’s Amazon packages; that number swells greatly during the peak holiday gift-giving season, which runs roughly between Nov. 24 and Dec. 25. When KCVG first opened in August 2021, Amazon lured in new hires with the promise of an extra $2 per hour during the peak season. What employees didn’t know was it would be their first and last season of peak holiday pay.

Air hub employees started union efforts in November 2022 after upper management announced there would be no peak pay for the 2022 holiday rush, but mandatory overtime would be required.

Quinn said 2023 is no different.

“Mandatory overtime begins this Saturday,” he told CityBeat. “Yes, we receive overtime over 40 hours, but say you get sick, you have to use unpaid time or your paid time off, but that’s not going to be time and a half. You also can’t take a personal leave of absence and you can’t submit a vacation request.”

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Employees pushing for a union at KCVG have been asking for a standard $30 per-hour wage, among other changes like improved health benefits, on-site translation for non-native English speakers, and more. Quinn makes $23 hourly. When asked if KCVG employees would receive peak pay this year, an Amazon spokesperson told CityBeat the company is increasing pay overall for its employees.

“This year, we invested $1.3 billion in additional pay for hourly employees across U.S. customer fulfillment and delivery, bringing our average hourly wage to over $20.50,” said Amazon spokesperson Mary Kate Paradis.

Amazon’s gross profit for the 2023 fiscal year was $256.202 billion, an 18.52% increase year-over-year for the world’s largest retailer.

It is this financial disparity that Quinn and others at KCVG were attempting to highlight earlier in November. During an afternoon of operating a union recruitment table in the KCVG parking garage, Quinn said Amazon management threatened employees who were complying with federal labor laws.

“We’ve been tabling out there in the same location, in the sort parking garage, maybe 10 or 12 feet from the entrance for months,” Quinn said.

What was different this time was the addition of a second table (totaling six feet of table length, according to Quinn) that posed a question to employees.

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“We had a big banner on the front that was basically a big check, and it showed the $10 billion in profits we made Amazon in the last three months. We had an easel next to our table with a white board that asked coworkers, ‘Where should the profits go?’ We had a few of our key demands on there.” Quinn said. “[Management] started coming out once every half hour, [checking badges], writing down the names of everyone who was at the table. Then they started making threats.”

Quinn said Amazon managers threatened to discipline and even fire the employees who were assembled in the parking garage, citing safety concerns from the union sign-up table.

“That we were preventing ingress and egress from the building to the parking lot. We told them that we were directly in front of a wall, that we weren’t blocking any entrances or exits, we were not in the flow of vehicle traffic, we were behind protective bollards between us and the cars and no one had to steer around our table to avoid us,” Quinn said. “But management set up five or six tables in the hallways and the breezeways and the cafeteria for swag handouts.”

Managers at KCVG ended up issuing “final-notice write-ups” to 12 employees for refusing to take down the table. Quinn said this means they can be terminated from their jobs for any infractions going forward.

“They refused to give us copies of our write-ups,” he said. “They didn’t give me the opportunity to sign or acknowledge the write-up. There was no HR person present.”

Paradis from Amazon told CityBeat the discipline had nothing to do with the signs about Amazon’s profits or the union effort.

“These individuals repeatedly refused to follow our policies even after meeting with site managers more than ten times to address the violation and ensure the policies were understood,” Paradis said. “This has nothing to do with any cause or group they support. Like any employer, we take appropriate action when policies are continually disregarded.”

Quinn disagrees, saying the policy union supporters were allegedly violating was never communicated to employees. He said managers couldn’t explain the egress rules or what constitutes an authorized structure at all.

“No manager would give me clarity on that question,” Quinn said. “They told me they didn’t have the information about that. I asked them, ‘Who does?’ They said they didn’t know. They said I can learn more about it when I appeal my write-up.”

Quinn and the other 11 employees who were written up for the union table all began to appeal the decision this week.

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“The site has already provided these employees with resources to appeal,” Paradis said.

Unionizing employees will continue to recruit during the peak season, highlighting the point that employees are going without peak pay. Quinn said there’s more than 1,300 employees who have signed a union card at KCVG.

“They’re trying to crush us,” he said. “We won’t let them.”

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This article appears in Nov 15-28, 2023.