AIRPORT CONTRACT EMPLOYEES SCORE FIRST UNION PACTS
Nearly three years ago, O’Hare International Airport employees pressed their case for higher wages by launching a strike timed to disrupt Thanksgiving week travel.
That was followed by a series of O’Hare protests to press their pay demands and claim $1.2 million in “wage theft” from airport employees. The protests were orchestrated by SEIU Local 1, which was seeking to organize the workers.
Now, Local 1 has negotiated the first union contracts with two major contractors — Scrub, Inc. and Prospect Airport Services — that guarantee 2,200 employees higher wages and benefits.
Tom Balanoff, president of SEIU Local 1, said the first of what he hopes will be a series of union contracts at O’Hare would not have been possible without the ordinance pushed through the City Council by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel two years ago.
SEIU Local 1 has an ownership stake in Sun-Times Media.
That ordinance tied licenses for airport contractors to a “labor peace agreement” that allowed baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, aircraft maintenance workers and security guards to organize without interference. Contractors are prohibited from preventing workers from “engaging in strikes, picketing, work stoppages, boycotts or other economic interference.”
As of July 1, 2018, those contractors and sub-contractors had to pay employees at least $13.45 an hour, with annual cost-of-living increases after that. Employees whose wages include gratuities were to be paid $1 an hour more than the $5.95 an hour minimum wage that applies to tipped employees.
“It’s very complicated … to organize workers at airports. They’re not under the standard National Labor Relations Act. That’s why we had to use our [political] power to create a process in the city … where workers could be guaranteed that they could organize free of intimidation and that contractors would bargain in good faith,” Balanoff said.
“Without the ordinance, the companies would have continued not to sit down with the workers. … Some of them would have continued to intimidate workers.”
The impacted employees serve as cabin cleaners, baggage handlers, security officers, cargo agents and wheelchair attendants at O’Hare.
They will receive roughly $8,000 more over the life of their three-year contracts, which also have increased health benefits and vacation time, as well as five additional holidays at time-and-ahalf pay.
Unions under the SEIU umbrella were among County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s biggest supporters.
But the SEIU Illinois State Council recently switched to Mayor Lori Lightfoot and contributed $100,000 to the new mayor.
“She’s made it very clear that she wants to move a $15 minimum wage much quicker here in the city. She wants to reform City Council,” Balanoff said.
“These are all things that we support.”