Will Airport Workers Start the Region’s Next Big Labor War?
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Workers at Portland International Airport, frustrated by low wages, are looking to form a union. The move threatens to open a second front in the Port of Portland’s years-long war with organized labor that occasionally has erupted into confrontations and threatened to destabilize the region’s economy.
Union officials say they are in talks with some of the approximately 598 subcontractors at the airport and that the majority of the workers they have had conversations with are in favor of forming a union.
"As a public institution, the port has a responsibility to make jobs at our airport good jobs," said Jesse Stemmler, spokesman for Services Employees International Union (SEIU) 49. "We hope that the port works with workers to raise standards covering all contractors to ensure fair compensation, lower turnover, adequate equipment and training, safety, security and service quality."
A bitter dispute with longshoremen has destabilized shipping operations in the city's ports for the last two years. Contentious contract negotiations between International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and grain elevator operators and a dispute between the ILWU and the Port of Portland have disrupted operations at Portland's grain terminals and container shipping at Terminal 6.
Fights between the port, grain operators and ILWU in both Portland and Vancouver have resulted in a flurry of shutdowns and accusations leveled against union organizers, including illegal work slowdowns, vandalism, and threats of violence and rape.
The port's fight with the ILWU resulted in a federal lawsuit. Operations were so disrupted that Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd., the Port of Portland's largest trans-Pacific shipping company, threatened to pull out of Oregon. Those threats prompted speculation concerning a sharp rise in the price of consumer goods in the region, and prompted Gov. John Kitzhaber to intervene.
ILWU workers only just reached a contract with grain operators last August. Now SEIU is looking to make a move at the port's most visible public facility, PDX.
While many airport workers are subcontractors, the union is pushing for Port of Portland to take action as the public agency that oversees the airport.
While union talks are in the early stages at the airport, worker tensions have been increasing over the last decade as the airlines and airport employers hire more subcontractors and drop benefits, union officials said.
A survey SEIU 49 conducted of 148 airport subcontracted workers found that about 37 percent make minimum wage -- $9.10 an hour -- and the median wage of all respondents was $10.30 an hour. About 67 percent said their employer doesn’t offer health insurance. The survey represents about a quarter of the airport’s contract employees, from baggage handlers to wheelchair helpers to aircraft marshals who direct the planes into the gates.
“If you’re making minimum wage you can barely pay for food, let alone healthcare,” said SEIU 49 political director Felisa Hagins.
The Port of Portland is using the PDX airport website and social media outlets to try to get a better handle on the workers' concerns, said Steve Johnson, spokesman for Port of Portland/PDX International Airport.
"Our real focus right now is just fully understanding the concerns, and then we’ll look at any appropriate next steps after that," he said. "We’re not getting too far ahead of ourselves on that.
"We just want to spend a little time hearing the views and better understanding this issue."
The union argues because the port touts good jobs and is appointed by the state to oversee the airport, it should be responsible for ensuring all workers get fair pay.
“A lot of people, when you see them, you think they work for the port,” Hagins said. “They should take responsibility over the jobs that are being provided.”
Broader Issue of Minimum Wage
Rising labor tensions at U.S. international airports are not uncommon. Workers at Kennedy Airport in New York went on strike last month over labor and pay issues. Earlier this year, the town of SeaTac, Wash., became the first in the nation to establish a $15-an-hour minimum wage after airport workers there demanded higher pay.
The national minimum wage movement also hit Seattle, as that city's City Council voted in June to establish a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
Meanwhile, the Port of Portland touts the airport as a good economic driver and job creator: PDX has been lauded as the country’s best airport for two years in a row by Travel and Leisure magazine. Critics say that should mean good pay is the standard for all workers at the airport.
As Oregon workers raise the issue of minimum wages at PDX, legislative and community leaders are working behind the scenes on a plan to push for a higher minimum wage.
“There’s a statewide conversation happening right now to ask if anyone working full time should have to live in poverty,” said Charlie Burr, spokesman for Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian. “It is time to step back and see if raising the minimum wage in Oregon if the time is right.
"We think it is.”
A 2002 ballot measure put Avakian in charge of raising the minimum wage annually based on inflation.
Oregon has one of the highest minimum wages in the country at $9.10 an hour. It will rise to $9.25 in January 2015.
A group called PDX15 is pushing for a $15 an hour minimum wage in Portland, mirroring a national trend that’s already moving in Washington state.
Critics of a higher minimum wage argue that raising the wage hurts businesses and teenagers.
“The truth is that the very people who minimum wage increases are ostensibly designed to benefit are quite often the individuals who are most negatively impacted,” Parrish Miller, policy analyst for the Idaho Freedom Foundation said in a recent article. “There is a statistically relevant correlation between increases in the minimum wage and increases in teen unemployment.”
More than half of the workers surveyed at PDX are more than 30 years old and 20 percent are older than 50.
“If they can do it to the north, we should be able to do it in the south,” Hagins said.
“There’s definitely a momentum to bring about change here in Oregon,” said Juan Carlos Ordonez, spokesman for the Oregon Center for Public Policy. “We say that the time is right.
"The time is right here in Oregon to raise the minimum wage.”
Hagins thinks that PDX's success as a traveler-friendly airport is due in part to workers.
“I think that employees have been a huge driver in making Portland America’s best airport and the reality is they haven’t seen the benefits of that personally," Hagins said. “We really feel like the Port of Portland could pass a policy on jobs they tout.
"Those type of good jobs need to be the jobs that these subcontracted workers have.”
Port officials say they are unclear on how many workers are upset and are trying to get a better handle on the situation. Union officials wouldn't say how far they were willing to take the campaign and what tactics they planned to use. But they said their campaign was just in the beginning stages.
"We need to better understand the issue in order to determine what authority, if any, we have in that arena," Johnson said.
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