Workers at Amazon's Largest Air Hub in the World Push for a Union (theguardian.com) 27
"Amazon workers at the air hub outside the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky international airport, Amazon's largest air hub in the world, are pushing to organize a union," reports the Guardian, "in the latest effort to mobilize workers at the tech company."
Workers say they are dissatisfied with annual wage increases this year. About 400 of them have signed a petition to reinstate a premium hourly pay for Amazon's peak season that hasn't been enacted at the site yet. Their main demands also include a $30 an hour starting wage, 180 hours of paid time off and union representation at disciplinary hearings....
About 4,500 workers are employed at the expanding air hub in Kentucky. Those organizing have already filed two unfair labor practice charges over Amazon's response to the unionization effort, which has included anti-union talking points on televisions and its communications system for employees that characterize the effort as a third-party scheme....
Organizing efforts at Amazon have spread beyond the JFK8 Staten Island, New York, warehouse, where workers won the first union election at an Amazon site in the US in April 2022. But they have yet to repeat the success.... Employees at an Amazon warehouse outside Raleigh, North Carolina, are now collecting union authorization signatures in hopes of filing for an election by this summer.... At other Amazon warehouses in Georgia, Minnesota, Illinois and California, workers have organized strikes and petitions to push the company to increase wages and improve working conditions.
Steven Kelley, a learning ambassador at the Kentucky air hub, explained that most workers were paid less than $20 an hour. He said the pay wasn't commensurate with the dangerous work the workers perform, in a location where employee turnover was about 150%, with a constant training of workers who wind up quitting. He also said the disciplinary procedures at Amazon weren't transparent or communicated well enough.... He explained that workers weren't paid enough to live without roommates and made less than other workers in transportation and logistics because they were classified as retail employees.
One worker at the Kentucy air hub complained to the Guardian, "We're the lifeblood of the company, not corporate, not upper management. We're actually the ones who are sorting the freight, and loading the freight."
About 4,500 workers are employed at the expanding air hub in Kentucky. Those organizing have already filed two unfair labor practice charges over Amazon's response to the unionization effort, which has included anti-union talking points on televisions and its communications system for employees that characterize the effort as a third-party scheme....
Organizing efforts at Amazon have spread beyond the JFK8 Staten Island, New York, warehouse, where workers won the first union election at an Amazon site in the US in April 2022. But they have yet to repeat the success.... Employees at an Amazon warehouse outside Raleigh, North Carolina, are now collecting union authorization signatures in hopes of filing for an election by this summer.... At other Amazon warehouses in Georgia, Minnesota, Illinois and California, workers have organized strikes and petitions to push the company to increase wages and improve working conditions.
Steven Kelley, a learning ambassador at the Kentucky air hub, explained that most workers were paid less than $20 an hour. He said the pay wasn't commensurate with the dangerous work the workers perform, in a location where employee turnover was about 150%, with a constant training of workers who wind up quitting. He also said the disciplinary procedures at Amazon weren't transparent or communicated well enough.... He explained that workers weren't paid enough to live without roommates and made less than other workers in transportation and logistics because they were classified as retail employees.
One worker at the Kentucy air hub complained to the Guardian, "We're the lifeblood of the company, not corporate, not upper management. We're actually the ones who are sorting the freight, and loading the freight."
Good for them (Score:1)
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rsilvergun can't stand living in this "doggy dog capitalist" world. Sounds stupid right? Those are his words, not mine:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
People always downmod me when I say rsilvergun is a moron. Problem is it's not trolling or flamebait, it's just a fact. Should be modded insightful IMO.
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Re: Good for them (Score:2)
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They really can't relo though - one of the biggest draws to using the CVG airport is that it's massively overbuilt for capacity that doesn't exist there any more, and there was shitloads of cheap land around it to build massive logistical facilities on.
CVG used to be a Delta Airlines hub, until Delta merged with Northwest Airlines and received shitloads of passenger gates at Detroit, New York (JFK), and Minneapolis. They took all their hub business out of Cincinnati to those three, and Cincinnati was left
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higher worker pay will get more money moving in the economy
We have the highest inflation in 40 years.
The last thing we need is "more money moving in the economy."
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Good. (Score:1)
That headline (Score:2)
This directly implies that there are Amazon Air Hubs, quite possibly larger ones, out of the world 0.0
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This directly implies that there are Amazon Air Hubs, quite possibly larger ones, out of the world 0.0
No, it means the target audience is American.
If you just say "largest", Americans will assume you mean "largest in America", so the qualifier "in the world" is needed.
By default, Americans assume the rest of the world doesn't exist.
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In for a surprise... (Score:2)
Yeah, they might not do that well thinking this. They are a link in the chain, and they might have some leverage but not that much. IIRC, the way the facility is set up, Amazon could easily close it without a whole lot of pain-- DHL took a lot of the risk in the facility.
Amazon needs an efficien
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You could be right but that's really the core of what is at all labor disputes. If it's really so detrimental to meet worker demands than sure, Amazon is free to shutter the operation and absorb the costs involved in that.
I however would say the somewhat American notion of "suck up the bad conditions or lose the job entirely" is really not a productive way to look at labor. It's up the workers to determine if conditions are bad and I am sure they are aware of the risks with this action but if they were tr
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I completely agree; Amazon is an abusive employer! I just doubt how much a union will improve the situation. A recent personal example was a unionized Starbucks: they might have a few better perks and maybe even base pay, but morale turns to shit, sales drop, customers lose interest in tipping, and really... is this your long-term career? This particular store is one I go to for a week once or twice a year, and I recognize some of the people as having been there a long time (a couple recognize me as well
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To be fair your example is pretty anecdotal and subjective. Being a union shop doesn't mean Starbucks Corporate loses control of the management you know? There's more to that story than "join union, store now lazy"
Also there really just hasn't been any reason for Amazon to change it's practices. They're profitable and achieved their wild success with such practices and now they are too big to really effectively be consumer boycotted or truly rc nomically incentives to do so. The culture just isn't there
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I don't think the workers (at this Starbucks) are *lazy*; it is that the work rules they have adopted are inefficient and the employees are now indifferent to the customers. Maybe it makes it a better workplace for them, but it is unsustainable from what I see. This particular location also had a walk-out when corporate management tried to "fix" things recently.
Re: In for a surprise... (Score:2)
What does that mean though and what could it mean. Can you be specific on what rules the store took from bargaining that affected the output on the customer end and what fixes did corporate try to implement?
I'm only asking because of curiosity and it's all framed a bit vaguely.
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they might have a few better perks and maybe even base pay, but morale turns to shit
More perks and money frequently does that.
Conversely, my non-union Starbucks that I go to almost every day only have a few people that under-perform; on the whole they are an excellent team.
They kiss your ring and go home happier for it?
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A while back there was a leaked document from Amazon where execs discussed the problem of running out of workers. Apparently so many people had been screwed by them and eventually quit or been fired, the pool of people who either didn't know how bad it was or were desperate enough to put up with it was getting too small.
Amazon is perfect for a union. (Score:2)
what Amazon really needs (Score:1)
Amazon needs those picking / sorting robots. They need them now.