Roughly 2,000 airport workers including baggage handlers have gone on strike in seven of the nation’s largest airports to fight for higher wages and union rights.
Art Wheaton, a senior lecturer at Cornell’s ILR School who has studied aerospace and the unions, says this publicity is not what the industry needs during the holidays and in light of the terrorist bombing of the Russian jet.
Wheaton says: “The strike by the contract workers has serious implications. The airline industry does not need this bad publicity during holiday travel times. It is also very serious in light of terrorist bombing of the Russian jet.
“By paying airport workers less than fast food workers in New York and other states, the airline industry limits the quality of applications being received and opens the door to abuse.
“The major markets in this strike action hire large numbers of foreign-born immigrants that may be unaware of the labor laws around union organizing. The unions have helped protect passenger safety with pilots and flight attendants for decades.”
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Ken Margolies, senior associate at Cornell ILR School’s Worker Institute, has spent much of his career in the labor movement working for the Service Employees Union and the Association of Flight Attendants. He says a strike that by going on strike against the airlines– instead of private contractors – workers are turning competition to their advantage.
Margolies says:
“A strike by contracted airport workers challenges the traditional concept of ‘who is the employer’ and seeks to turn competition to their advantage. Traditionally, workers negotiate with their employer, in this case the private contractors, who clean airplanes and provide other services to airlines. “However, competition between contractors makes it impossible for any one of them to raise wages, even if they are inclined to do so. Following a strategy that worked well for janitors in many cities, the Service Employees International Union seeks to take wages out of the competition by pressuring the airlines which hire the contractors to pay enough so the contractors can pay a minimum wage of $15 per hour. “If one private contractor raised wages alone, that contractor would not be able to bid successfully against contractors paying their workers less. That’s why the service union is putting pressure on all airlines to pay contractors enough to afford paying their workers a decent wage.
“If one airline pledges to comply with the union’s demands, the union is likely to only strike contractors working for the non-complying airlines. That way competition between airlines will give complying airlines an advantage since their passengers will have less reason to worry about flight delays or cancellations. “By striking before the busy holiday season, the service union will get a great deal of publicity, which workers hope will pressure airlines to essentially fund the increase in wages. The union probably hopes that by threatening and holding short strikes, fliers will worry that their flights may be late or cancelled.”
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