In a strongly worded letter, Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye this week told major airlines that his agency will insist on improved wages and benefits packages for contracted passenger service workers as
The Port Authority’s executive director said this week that airlines should begin providing better wages and benefits for their workers, such as Shareeka Elliott, pictured here, a single mother who works for $8 an hour scrubbing floors at JFK Airport. File photo
requirements in all leases at the city’s two airports – JFK International and LaGuardia.
“As I wrote before, the Port Authority is prepared to use every tool at its disposal to achieve these goals,” Foye said in the Feb. 10 letter. “Providing an improved wage and benefits package to the thousands of hardworking men and women that make our airport system the largest in the country is something that cannot wait. I look forward to working with all of you in bringing the Port Authority’s airports into the 21st century.”
Foye’s statement follows months of highly-publicized protests at JFK and LaGuardia, during which time workers protested what they said amounted to long hours and little pay for jobs that give them no health care and no sick time, as well as being harassed by bosses when they spoke out against their conditions.
“I’m 26 years old, and I already have back problems from my job – and no health care,” Shareeka Elliott, a terminal cleaners, said during a protest outside JFK in November. “I have two little girls, and I want to send my babies to college. I can’t do that on $12,000 a year. We need to eat; we need to move out of my parents’ home. I’m a young woman; life shouldn’t be like this. We need to live.”
32BJ President Hector Figueroa praised Gov. Cuomo and Foye for their efforts to improve the lives of workers at New York’s airports.
“We are thankful to Gov. Cuomo for supporting the Port Authority in requiring that airlines raise workers out of poverty,” he said in a prepared statement. “Cuomo’s leadership stands in great contrast to what we’re seeing in New Jersey with Gov. Christie insisting on standing in the way of progress.”
Because of the peculiarity of the agency, which is run jointly by Cuomo and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Foye’s demands, so far, only cover 8,000 workers performing passenger service functions at JFK and LaGuardia.
“Gov. Cuomo and Pat Foye are focused on finding solutions to these problems. It gives us hope that this process is going to end up in the right place, that this puts us on the right path,” Figueroa said.
During protests in recent months, workers have called on Airway Cleaners and Alstate Maintenance – two of the largest private contractors at the city’s airports – to provide a living wage and benefits, including health care and sick time. Workers have filed complaints with the attorney general’s office alleging Alstate violated the state’s tipped minimum cash wage law. According to employees, they earn as little as $4.15 an hour, while the state’s minimum wage rage for individuals in jobs where they are tipped is $5.50 an hour.
Foye, in his letter, said airlines, and the companies with which they contract, need to give contracted passenger service workers at JFK And LaGuardia who make $9 or less an hour an immediate $1 an hour raise with a phase-in to $10.10 an hour; recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday; and work toward “providing an improved wage and benefits package to the thousands of hard-working men and women” at the airports, developing a plan within 90 days.
By Anna Gustafson
