‘Bucks-style’ jobs agreement sought for airport workers
A Milwaukee County supervisor called Monday for employees at Mitchell International Airport to receive the same type of labor agreement that will cover workers in and around the new Bucks arena.
Supervisor Marcelia Nicholson said she expects to introduce an ordinance in March to bring Bucks-style guarantees to workers at the airport.
Key among those guarantees, Nicholson said, would be to draw a significant share of employees from high-poverty areas, as the Bucks have pledged.
“I believe we need to target certain ZIP codes,” Nicholson said during a news conference at the airport. “I grew up in the 53206 ZIP code, so I know how desolate it can be.”
The Bucks have agreed that half of the jobs at the arena and in the surrounding entertainment district will go to people living in ZIP codes, including 53206, that suffer most from low wages and high unemployment.
All of the service and hospitality jobs in the arena district also will be filled through a “hiring hall” run by the newly formed Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization. The new group, working with employers, will recruit, screen and train people for the jobs.
Residents of high-poverty areas should be offered similar training and skills development for airport jobs, Nicholson said.
“What’s good for the Bucks is good for the airport,” she said.
She said agreements like the one struck by the owners of the basketball team “should not be the exception but the rule.”
Besides the job-filling and training provisions, the Bucks agreement sets a minimum wage that gradually rises to $15 an hour in 2023.
Under an ordinance enacted in late
2016, employees of Milwaukee County and its contractors get at least $13.01 an hour and will get a $15 minimum in 2021.
However, the airport’s two large food-and-beverage concessionaires are not legally required to pay the minimum yet because their contracts predate the ordinance, and one of the two is not doing so, an airport spokeswoman said.
While food-and-beverage contractor HMSHost is voluntarily paying the $13.01 minimum, fellow concessionaire SSP America is not, the airport spokeswoman said.
“I make $9.25 an hour,” Kim Ayyash-Roman, a 51-year-old food preparation worker for SSP, said at the news conference.
“$9.25 an hour is not good. That’s not right. I’m training people.”
SSP will be required to pay the minimums set by the county if its contract is renewed after the current agreement expires in 2019, the airport spokeswoman said.
However, Peter Rickman, executive director of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization, said he believes “there’s a reasonable case to be made” that all concessionaires are required to pay the county minimum wage now.
A representative of SSP could not be reached for comment Monday.
Also appearing with Nicholson and Ayyash-Roman at Monday’s news conference were representatives of the “Fight for $15” organization that has been pushing for higher minimums for low-wage workers, most notably in the fast-food industry.
Fight for $15 is backed by the Service Employees International Union, which also has provided financial support to the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization.
Critics of higher minimum wages, which have been approved in many cities and states, argue that they can price low-skilled workers out of the labor market and kill jobs.