When making ends meet is up in the air
Bush airport service workers return to jobs with new hazards — and little pay
Jessica Hathorne had little choice but to stay at home when she was called back to her job as a bartender at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Her infant son can’t attend daycare because he has a heart condition that puts him at a high risk of serious illness or death from the coronavirus.
Her fiancé also had little choice but to return to his job as a bartender at the airport, where he is earning just a fraction of his previous income as both customers and tips are few and far between. Now, they both worry, not only about him bringing the virus home, but also how they will keep up with rent and other bills — especially since Hathorne’s unemployment benefits fell by $600 a week with the expiration of a federal emergency program.
“No one was planning for this pandemic to go on this long,” she said. “This is killer to us.”
Airport workers such as Hathorne and her fiancé find themselves on the front lines of both the health and economic crises created by the coronavirus, risking infection while earning far less money than they did pre-pandemic. Servers and bartenders say they aren’t sure what they’re doing at the airport. There aren’t many passengers. They’re not making tips. Their colleagues are testing positive for COVID-19.
Schedules, too, have been turned upside down. Nicole Lockett returned to work as a server at restaurants in Bush airport in July, but was suddenly required to work a shift that starts before dawn after years of working nights. Her earnings, meanwhile, have plunged by nearly two-thirds.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” Lockett said. “I cannot switch my whole life up for this company where I am going back to minimum wage.”
Many bartenders, servers and cooks at Bush airport work for OTG, a New
York airport service company that runs several restaurants at the Houston airport. For those in jobs that depend on tips, such as servers and bartenders, the base pay is a little more than $2 an hour, although companies must supplement that if the base plus tips don’t add up to $7.25 an hour, the minimum wage.
Not the same
In July, 946,000 passengers traveled through IAH, down 77 percent from 4.2 million during July 2019, according to the Houston Airport System. Fewer travelers, empty restaurants and sparse tips mean bartenders and servers are making the minimum wage. Before the pandemic, they said, they usually earned around $800 a week, or
$20 an hour.
Larry Schwartz, OTG’s chief strategy officer, said he’s sympathetic to the frustrations of servers and bartenders whose pay has been sharply reduced by the pandemic (“I wish everybody can be making lots of money”), but the company is struggling financially, along with the entire air travel industry.
“I understand that they’re not making as much money as they are used to making, but they have a job, and they’re getting paid to come to work,” Schwartz said. “Not everyone has a job. Not everyone has the ability to earn money. As the airlines increase their flights, there will be more passengers in the terminal, and they’ll do better. It’s a temporary situation.”
While the company wishes it could do more for its employees, Schwartz said, it’s unlikely OTG would pay more to bring tip-based employees closer to what they made before the pandemic. “I don’t see that happening,” he said.
“Our revenues are way down,” Schwartz said. “Everyone is in the same boat. Everyone has got to band together to make sacrifices.”
The airline industry’s bailout from Congress has meant that major carriers, such as United Airlines, which dominates the Houston market, could ramp up flights again and keep employees on payroll. That created more demand for airport services (OTG in Houston received a paycheck protection program loan of between $5 and $10 million, according to the Small Business Administration).
But with the airlines’ money about to run out at the end of September, United warned that it could layoff some 35,000 workers this fall, including 3,900 at Bush. Other major airlines, including American Airlines and Delta Airlines, also have announced major layoffs coming this fall.
Airport service companies that employ baggage handlers, wheelchair attendants, servers, bartenders and cooks, may also need to cut jobs, since fewer flights and other reductions by major airlines mean fewer services needed from the supporting companies.
Analysts said uncertainty is making it difficult for airport service companies to determine how many workers to bring back and how many to layoff permanently, since they’re not sure what level of staffing will be needed in just few short months.
“Arguably, staff will need to be there in the future when there is a recovery, but there’s a need to get by in the near to medium term,” said Jeffery Lack, an airport analyst for Fitch Ratings, a credit rating agency. “It’s very challenging for management right now to tread that line to figure out what the right level of staffing is.” (Fitch is owned by Hearst Corp., the parent of the Houston Chronicle.)
‘This is not my normal’
In the meantime, employees at OTG and other companies in the travel and service sectors say they live with constant anxiety about their health and their finances.
Lockett, the server at IAH, was excited when she first got the job at OTG earlier this year. The pay and benefits were good enough that she would no longer have to work more than one job. She could also afford a one-bedroom apartment, bringing an end to months of couch surfing.
“I cried for two days, tears of joy,” she said, recalling when she moved into her apartment in March. “And then, about three weeks later, we were laid off. I was just so scared.”
She relied on unemployment benefits over the spring and summer while she waited to return to work. With the additional $600 a week provided through federal stimulus legislation, her benefits almost matched her earnings. In July, OTG began to call workers back.
Schwartz, OTG’s chief strategy officer, said the company has recalled about 50 percent of staff at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
But after only a few weeks of working, she was struggling not only with her finances, but with her mental and physical health. For 15 years, Lockett had worked the night shift closing bars and restaurants. When she returned to the airport, her shift was switched to opening the restaurant and starting at 4 a.m.
Driving home at the end of her 10-hour shift around 2 p.m. — when she used to start working — she was afraid of falling asleep at the wheel. “I was walking around like a zombie,” she said.
“This is not my life, this is not my normal,” said Lockett. She tried to negotiate with the company to modify her hours, with no results. She eventually was told to turn in her badge.
The company said the schedules in place now are temporary, but it must adjust them to meet the needs of the traveling public.
Frontline workers
At least three employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since returning to work, according to interviews and internal documents provided by workers at OTG’s restaurants at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Employees say that the company hasn’t done enough to protect them and rushed the reopening. They claim it lacked robust plans for social distancing at airport restaurants.
The company disputes those claims. It says it has been more than cautious in adhering to public health guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control.
Schwartz, the OTG executive, acknowledged that some employees have tested positive, but added that the company has moved quickly to isolate them and those who have come in contact with them. The company also works with airport and local health authorities to do contact tracing, he said.
“We’ve been diligent in getting our crew members tested if they have symptoms,” he said. “We identify anybody who may have come in contact with that individual that tested positive and we send them home or tell them not to come to work. We don’t want to see it spread among our workers. Also, we don’t want to see any community spread.”
Jose Guerra, who works as a bartender at IAH for OTG, tested positive for COVID-19 a few weeks after returning to the airport part time. He was instructed by his doctor to re-test. Positive, again.
Guerra, also a representative for the UNITE HERE union, which represents airport service industry workers at Bush, thus far has been asymptomatic. He’s been out of work for weeks as he quarantines.
He’s still on partial unemployment benefits, since he wasn’t back to working full time. That has helped stabilize him financially, he said. But emotionally, he’s stressed about his health and his colleagues.
“People have serious concerns,” he said of going back to work. “Let’s be real, everybody is afraid of getting sick.”