Florida Airport Workers Call for Fair Wages and Safe Working Conditions
Last week, essential workers at two major airports in Florida — Tampa International (TPA) and Orlando International (MCO) — held actions with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ, to call attention to low wages, as well as issues like short-staffing, paltry job benefits, and intimidation from employers for workplace organizing.
On Tuesday, workers at Tampa International Airport held a press conference outside of the airport, and organized a “turkey-less” Thanksgiving display to symbolize the poverty many of the workers live in, with hourly rates as low as $7 for tipped jobs. Two days later, wheelchair assistants at Orlando International struck for a day, to call attention to low wages as well as health and safety concerns.
“[Orlando] workers, employed by Baggage Airlines Guest Services Inc. (BAGS), an airline contractor for American Airlines and Frontier, earn as little as $7.98 an hour, plus unreliable tips, have no paid sick days or other meaningful benefits, and say they are dangerously overworked,” the union wrote in a news statement.
Many airport workers, including wheelchair assistants, non-TSA security, and baggage handlers at both airports are officially employees of contractors, not the airports themselves. According to SEIU and workers, this arrangement forces contractors to compete with one another for contracts with airlines to the detriment of the lowest paid workers, often resulting in low pay for essential work and little to no job benefits.
While the airline industry received a $54 trillion bailout through the CARES Act earlier this year — with more to come through the recently passed infrastructure bill — the lowest paid airport workers at these major transportation hubs have been squeezed. And now, workers report issues with short staffing, as well as ongoing issues with inadequate pay, little to no benefits, and retaliation for organizing.
Gabe Ocasio-Meijas, a Starbucks barista and employee of HMSHost at Orlando International Airport, spoke at last week’s action in Orlando. A union leader with Unite Here, Meijas was fired from his job at the airport last year for trying to organize his workplace. He and his union filed an unfair labor practice charge against HMSHost (a contractor at MCO), telling the National Labor Relations Board he’d been illegally fired in retaliation for union organizing. The NLRB sided with Meijas in their decision, and he was rehired earlier this year.
“I stand here in solidarity with every single one of you,” Meijas told his fellow airport workers last Thursday. “We’re going to organize MCO wall-to-wall.”
While CEOs of these major airport hubs get generous salaries, and contractors like BAGS Inc. (or SP Plus) reap millions, many workers at these airports, making $7 to $13 per hour, struggle just to get by.
Anthony Sanders, a baggage handler and wheelchair assistant at Tampa International Airport, told press he’d briefly lost his apartment, lost his car, and has continued to go into work at times despite suffering injuries on the job because he can’t afford not to.
Sanders is paid $7 per hour, as a tipped employee, and says tips from passengers — many of whom are elderly, or live on a fixed income — are unreliable and unpredictable.
“I like my job. I love taking care of passengers, but it’s not fair how low the pay is,” Sanders said. “Passengers depend on us to physically help them and make sure they’re getting to their flight safely. Our work is important so we deserve better.”
Both actions last week, in Tampa and Orlando, Florida were held as part of a national week of action organized by 32BJ SEIU, which has 175,000 members in 12 states. They’re the largest property services union in the country, and have an ongoing campaign to organize Florida airport workers.
“If airlines won’t step up and make air travel reliable again then there must be national oversight and accountability, including fair wages and benefits for airport workers — so our airports are safely staffed with well-trained people who have what they need to thrive, not just survive,” the union wrote in a press release for the Orlando action.
Airport workers also demonstrated in Boston and Dulles, Virginia. This past Saturday, hundreds of janitors unionized with SEIU Local 105 in Denver, Colorado walked off the job at Denver International Airport over contract negotiations. That same afternoon, the union said they’d reached a “historic agreement” that would provide the workers with a $4/hour pay increase over three years.
All of this comes amidst what has been dubbed by some as “Strikesvember,” or “Strikesgiving” — in a follow-up to last month’s wave of Striketober activity, which saw thousands of US workers across various industries out on, or about to strike.
“Striketober may very well be just a viral hashtag, but the growing worker militancy it invokes is unmistakably in the air, fanning like pixie dust down to the lowest number of workers banding together to form unions and strike,” wrote Luis Feliz Leon and Maximilian Alvarez for the Real News Network, in an analysis of the Striketober “fanfare”. “What remains to be seen are efforts to rebuild class organizations on an even more massive scale for a lasting rebalance of power in the struggle of the many against the rapacious few.”
To learn more about the airport actions in Tampa and Orlando, check out this piece I co-wrote with journalist Justin Garcia for Creative Loafing Tampa Bay and be on the lookout for my coverage of the Orlando action for Orlando Weekly, which will be live online later this week.
