NY/NJ Airport Workers: 'We Need Health Insurance Now!'
New York, NY - Low-wage workers who help move multitudes in and out of New York and New Jersey airports daily but still can’t afford the prohibitively high cost of private health insurance are hoping this is the year legislators on both sides of the Hudson confront tight-fisted employers.
On Tuesday, January 22, hundreds of workers at JFK International Airport rallied with 32BJ SEIU in support of the Healthy Terminals Act — a bill that, if enacted, would compel employers to provide baggage handlers, wheelchair attendants, cabin cleaners and other airport workers with a $4.54-an-hour wage supplement to purchase health insurance.
“Everybody is struggling,” airport cleaner Delrose Kelly told LaborPress last week. “This would help a lot.”
Union leaders, clergy members and supportive city and state officials invoked the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his fight against poverty and economic inequality, as well as 32BJ’s six year campaign to successfully secure union representation, paid time off and high-er wages for struggling airport workers, in calling for passage of the Healthy Terminals Act.
“Without the type of employer paid affordable quality healthcare insurance that many 32BJ members already have, workers at airports are forced into difficult choices and difficult deci-sions and difficult realities that many American workers face when it comes to healthcare,” 32BJ President Kyle Bragg told demonstrators. “Some employers provide health plans that have premiums, co-pays, deductibles that are so high — they are effectively out of the reach of those workers.”
A JFK Terminal 1 wheelchair attendant named Tracy said airport workers who have spent the last six years fighting for economic justice need the “final piece.”
“We need healthcare and we need it now — not tomorrow,” she said. “We cannot continue; we need your votes. [And] we need this to happen now.”
Passage of the Healthy Terminals Act would affect some 40,000 low-wage airport workers in New York and New Jersey.
Hard-pressed airport workers point out that their daily interactions with thousands of travel-ers from all over the world make them especially vulnerable to illness.
“Every new virus that comes on line — the first line of defense is right here at this airport,” 32BJ Vice-President Rob Hill said …