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Vol. 81/No. 37 October 9, 2017
Chicago airport ‘pay raise’ gives up workers’ rights
BY NAOMI CRAINE
CHICAGO — “Chicago Set to Raise Airport Workers’ Pay, Clear Path to a
Union,” read a headline in the Chicago Tribune Sept. 5. The next day the
City Council unanimously approved an ordinance revising city licensing
requirements for contractors hired by the airlines to employ cabin
cleaners, baggage handlers, janitors, wheelchair attendants, security
guards and others.
It mandates a raise in the base hourly wage to $13.45 — a bit higher
than the city minimum, which is scheduled to rise to $13 in July 2019.
Workers who get tips would get $1 more than the city’s tipped minimum
wage, which is currently $6.10. Officials of the Service Employees
International Union, which lobbied Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel and
city councilors for the changes, celebrated it as a big victory.
But if you look past the headlines, the trade-off for a much-needed pay
raise is a weakening of workers’ ability to bring their collective
strength to bear through strikes, protests and other organizing activities.
The new regulations also require every contractor and any union that
represents or seeks to represent its employees to sign a “Labor Peace
Agreement … prohibiting the Labor Organization and its members from
engaging in, supporting, encouraging or assisting any picketing, work
stoppages, boycotts, or any other economic interference by the Labor
Organization or by Licensee’s employees.”
“It’s a win-win-win-win for airport workers, passengers, the city and
the airlines,” said SEIU Local 1 President Tom Balanoff in a union press
release Sept 6. The ordinance passed unanimously.
Over the last 25 years, in Chicago and nationwide, airline bosses have
outsourced more and more airport jobs to contractors, eliminating union
protections and slashing pay. Just between 2002 and 2012, the percentage
of baggage porters employed by contractors rose from 25 percent to 84
percent, and average pay of over $19 an hour fell more than 45 percent.
Members of the SEIU and other workers seeking to unionize have organized
pickets and rallies at airports across the country in recent years
demanding higher pay and better working conditions. But the union
officialdom has banked on “friends of labor” in the Democratic Party for
any progress, as opposed to mobilizing the power of the workers. The
Chicago ordinance, with its promise of no further protests or threats to
the bosses’ profits, is the latest example.
The only “contract” required by the city is for the bosses and the union
to agree to prohibit the union from using any form of action as a means
of “dispute resolution.”
The higher wages aren’t written into a contract the bosses have been
forced to sign, and they could be rolled back — as the incremental raise
to a minimum wage of $11 passed in St. Louis was reduced by officials in
the state government to $7.70.
The only power workers can rely on is their organization, increasing
unity and capacity to fight. Rather than orient to one or another of the
bosses’ political parties — a course that has led to the weakening of
the labor movement over the past few decades, at the airport and
everywhere — workers need to look to independent working-class political
action.
Related articles:
Chicken plant bosses seek to jump line speeds 25%
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