On August 12th over 1,300 sort workers at DHL’s global hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) joined Teamsters Local 89 after the Company agreed to voluntarily recognize their workers right to collectively bargain. The DHL CVG global hub is the center of DHL’s air delivery operations in the United States and is extremely similar in nature to both UPS Worldport in Louisville, and the Amazon KCVG Air Cargo Hub located directly across the street from DHL at the CVG Airport.
For the past several months, Local 89 President Avral Thompson has worked tirelessly along with Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman, General Counsel David Suetholz, the DHL Express Division, and the Organizing Department to ensure this campaign successfully brought the sort workers into our Teamsters family.
“We’re excited to have the DHL CVG sort workers join our Local, and we look forward to representing them with the strength and militance we’re known for,” said Thompson. “I want to thank everyone at the International for the hard work they put into this, especially Organizing Director Chris Rosell and his entire team for running an outstanding campaign. These workers wouldn’t have become Teamsters without the cooperation and dedication our entire union has shown over these last several months.”
Local 89 Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Cooper added, “This is a big win for Local 89 and the Teamsters in general. As someone who works alongside Avral every day, I can tell you that he put his entire heart and soul into getting this done and making sure these workers became Teamsters. I couldn’t be prouder to be his friend and partner here at Local 89.”
Ramp and tug workers at DHL CVG who organized last year won a strong first contract in January following a twelve-day strike. Now that DHL has voluntarily recognized the sort workers, they have immediately gained the benefits and protections of that existing contract and will also begin negotiating for language unique to their jobs soon.
In the past few weeks, we have established a satellite office in Florence that we have come to refer to as Local 89 North. This office will serve as our base of operations for DHL CVG as well as the ongoing Amazon KCVG organizing campaign. Local 89 North is currently staffed by several members of our Organizing Department and will soon have two Business Agents permanently stationed there to represent our new members at DHL CVG. We will share more details about our DHL CVG Business Agents and plans for representing these new members in the coming days.
From President Thompson, Secretary-Treasurer Cooper, and everyone at Teamsters Local 89 to all the sort workers at DHL CVG – welcome to our proud union family!
