Miami airport workers fighting for better conditions face retaliation
For seven years, Leila Benitez has worked as a cabin cleaner at Miami international airport for the Spainbased contractor Eulen America. The company employs 3,000 workers at airports throughout the US, with about 1,500 working in Miami.
The working conditions at Eulen America, Benitez said, are deplorable. Vehicles used to travel between planes often don’t work and are infested with roaches. The doors, brakes and gas gauges on cars don’t function correctly and seats are filled with holes. Workers are often denied breaks, adequate access to water and are treated poorly overall, Benitez said.
Eulen America has recently come under fire for working conditions and treatment of their workers at Miami’s airport. Last month, the Florida congresswomen Donna Shalala and Frederica Wilson, both Democrats, hosted a roundtable with several workers to discuss worker treatment and to pressure American Airlines and Delta to take action, as both major airlines currently have contracts with Eulen America.
But since that meeting, workers who spoke to the Guardian claim they have faced retaliation and intimidation for speaking out and engaging in union organizing with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Rather than helping with their fight for better conditions, the appearance of the politicians has instead triggered retaliation, workers said.
“I was one of the speakers at the roundtable. Right after that they started cutting my hours,” said Benitez. “The next day I came in, my manager told me I was going to get a warning from something three weeks before due to another worker in my crew who missed cleaning a spot on a plane, and they had already given that worker a warning.”
Ernest Lozano, a ramp worker at Eulen for over a year, attended the hearing as well and claimed his manager banned him from eating lunch in the break room the next day.
He now has to eat in the lavatory truck he works in where the plane waste is kept.
In September 2018, Lozano injured his back on the job and was just sent home for a couple of days without pay. When he returned to work, Lozano wound up injuring his back again to the extent he couldn’t get back up. “I hurt my spine completely, cracked a couple of vertebrae,” he said.
Lozano explained work injuries are increasingly common as Eulen has reduced staff personnel to crews since he started working there. “My doctor couldn’t believe I’m only 21 years old and have so many injuries to my back that will basically affect me the rest of my life.” he said.
Joseph Palma, 40, recently had a stroke, but could only take three days off from work as Eulen doesn’t offer workers paid time off or sick days. He has worked at Eulen assisting customers for over a year.
“Two weeks ago, supervisors in the office said there were going to be a lot of consequences for workers asking for better conditions,” Palma said. “They said the only right you have is to clock in and clock out.”
The day after attending the same roundtable, Palma was switched to help clean airplane cabins, a job he has never done or trained for. He believes it was retaliation.
Before the roundtable meeting and news reports on working conditions, a worker for Eulen at Miami international airport who requested to remain anonymous in fear of retaliation, told the Guardian they were placed in a meeting in early April 2019 with their supervisor, who told them and other workers not to get involved with the union.
“One of the supervisors told me and a group of workers that we should not get involved with the union because the same thing that happened to people in Triangle [another airport contract that unionized] would happen to us, that they fired 10 people for getting involved with the union,” the worker said. The SEIU noted Triangle never fired workers for unionizing. “He also told us that the union was going to give a list to Eulen of the people that had signed and that Eulen would fire these people and be more strict with them.”
Eulen America has a record of union busting. In 2016, Joanne Alexander was fired as a cabin cleaner at Fort Lauderdale airport after being heavily involved in pushing for Broward county’s living wage ordinance to cover airport workers. When she went to renew her security clearance badge for the airport, she was told her application form was expired.
“I went back to the Eulen office, they said they wouldn’t give me a new one, so I was fired and good luck,” Alexander said.
In January 2018, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in her favor that she was wrongfully terminated and ordered Eulen to reinstate her, but they are still appealing against the decision. “I had two kids, I had bills to pay. I was struggling. After three or four months, I found another job,” she said.
In 2015, Eulen also reached a settlement with another worker, agreeing to pay him more than $20,000 in back wages, though they did not admit any wrongdoing.
Eulen workers at other airports have also claimed the contractor treats workers poorly and creates unsafe working conditions.
“This is an internal problem within the company. The way they speak to us, they don’t care about employees, it’s just about getting the job done however they need to do it,” said.
Giovhan Dejoie started working for Eulen America at John F Kennedy international airport as a baggage handler in November 2018.
Dejoie explained he has frequently had wages stolen from him by not being paid the correct amount of hours he had worked. “A manager recently asked me if I heard about the union and was told to not join them, ‘You can’t change the rules of this company,’” Dejoie added.
Eulen declined to comment on the record during the reporting of this story.
But after publication, a representative for Eulen America at Holland & Knight law firm told the Guardian in an email, “All Eulen America employees are treated with dignity and respect and the Eulen Group fully supports its employees worldwide who have decided to unionize, as well as those here in the United States who already have freely chosen not to do so.”
Supervisors in the office said there were going to be a lot of consequences for workers asking for better conditions Joseph Palma