As Airlines Seek Financial Help Due to Losses from Coronavirus Outbreak, Workers Ask, ‘What About Us?’

WASHINGTON — Takiah Garrett, a customer service representative at Newark Airport, still has a job, even as more than 100 of her fellow airport employees have been laid off as fewer people travel due to coronavirus lockdowns. She said she worries that she will be next.

“I know I work in a high-risk job but I need my job and I like my job,” Garrett told reporters Sunday. " I need to keep a roof over my head and my three kids. I could get laid off any minute now."

Airport employees like Garrett worry about their job security as President Donald Trump and congressional leaders decide how much money to spend on an industry reeling as the coronavirus leads more and more Americans to stay home.

The employees work for independent companies, not the airlines directly, and handle baggage, take passengers in wheelchairs to the gates, and clean the terminals.

Around 120 contract workers already have been laid off at Newark Airport, with more expected soon, according to their union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union.

“They’re being thrown out on the street while airlines seek a $60 billion bailout,” 32BJ SEIU President Kyle Bragg said. “If we are bailing out the airlines, they have to bail out the workers.”

The airlines’ trade group, Airlines for America, did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

Airline industry aid is among the items being negotiated as part of an economic stimulus bill worth at least $1 trillion.

Democrats insist that a condition of the airline aid be that the workers, including sub-contractors like Garrett, keep their jobs and that the industry can’t spend the federal funds on stock buybacks or corporate executive pay instead.

“If all I am doing is improving a corporate bottom line without improving the ability of workers to be employed and get a pay check, I haven’t achieved the goal,” U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, who is participating in the talks, told NJ Advance Media.

A Senate effort to bring legislation up for debate Sunday was delayed when Democrats, who have enough votes to block action, balked at several provisions, particularly one that would give the Trump administration as much as $500 billion to spend as it sees fit to help industries and states.

Nor have lawmakers agreed on how much money to give directly to Americans, or whether there should be one-shot or continuing payments.

“This is not the way you negotiate,” said Menendez, D-N.J. “It doesn’t solve the problem. We’re not going to get a lot of shots at a trillion-dollar package. We’ve got to get it right.”

Besides activities like Sunday’s press call, Local 32BJ’s vice president, Rob Hill, said union officials, airport employees and state and local officials who supported them were burning up the phone lines urging federal lawmakers to insist on job protections in any bailout.

“We’re trying to make as much noise as we possibly can,” Hill said.

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

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