Wearing masks emblazoned with their union logo while chanting 6 feet apart, close to 100 baggage handlers, security guards, cabin cleaners and other airport workers rallied in downtown Newark Thursday, calling for passage of a bill that would help 10,000 employees in low-wage jobs at Newark Liberty International Airport pay for their healthcare.
“Terminal workers must unite/Healthcare is a human right!” workers chanted at Military Park, dressed in purple T-shirts of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the yellow Ts of UNITE HERE Local 100. The unions represent most airport support workers at Newark Liberty as well as John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports in New York.
The The Healthy Terminals Act, sponsored by state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen County), would require that employers pay airport support workers a $4.54-an-hour healthcare supplement, on top of their hourly minimum wage.
The supplement would be used provide healthcare coverage for workers who previously had none, to offset excessive employee contributions to premiums, or to improve coverage from existing plans that cost less than the hourly supplement, but fail to meet federal Labor Department minimum coverage standards for employees of firms with federal contracts.
“What’s the point of health insurance if you have to pay $160 from each check,” Richard Chisolm of Newark, a 51-year-old baggage handler who supports a family of six children, told the gathering. “We should be spending that $160 on food.”
Proponents of the bill say the heath of airport workers is at a heightened risk during the coronavirus pandemic.
“They’re in a job that constantly puts them in contact with the traveling public, and the traveling public is the primary means of transmission,” said Assemblyman Dan Benson, a Mercer County Democrat who chairs the Assembly Transportation Committee, and spoke at the rally.
Apart from Benson, other lawmakers who addressed the rally included Weinberg — on videotape —plus state Sen. Joseph Cryan and Assemblywoman Linda Carter, both Democrats from Union County whose districts include part of Newark Liberty, a third of which lies in Elizabeth.
Benson said his committee may be assigned the bill in the lower chamber. It’s now in the Senate, where it’s scheduled for a hearing Monday in Trenton before the Labor Committee.
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While the bill is intended to address the enhanced risk airport workers face due to their exposure to the traveling public amid the coronavirus pandemic, the virus has had a devastating effect on the airline industry, particularly in the New York-New Jersey region, where the volume of flights at the three major airports was down by more than two thirds in July compared to the same month a year earlier, according to industry figures.
Airlines for America, the main industry group, opposes the Healthy Terminals bill, and issued a statement Thursday warning that the bill could backfire.
“A4A members comply with all applicable state wage and labor laws and are committed to protecting our industry’s hardworking men and women, as well as those whose jobs rely on the U.S. airline industry,” the statement read.
But, it added, “This proposal singles out the airline industry for substantial costs and would further exacerbate the devastating financial impacts already felt due to COVID-19. Contrary to its intent, the Healthy Terminals Act could result in fewer jobs and adversely affect working families.”
The healthcare bill is part of a continuing drive by the unions over the past decade to improve wages, benefits and overall conditions for workers at the bi-state region’s major airports, resulting in higher wages, paid holidays and other benefits to employees of service firms that contract with airlines for much of the work not directly related to flying.
At the same time, the unions have waged a recruitment drive to grow their ranks among the total of 40,000 support workers at the three big airports, with more than 15,000 of them now unionized, about two thirds with 32BJ and the rest with UNITE HERE.
Earlier in their airport campaign, the unions had been able to persuade the airport’s operator, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to impose a minimum wage policy on the contractors doing business at its airports, and then to raise the minimum again.
But the bi-state Port Authority declined to impose a healthcare policy, asserting it lacked the administrative wherewithal to track and enforce compliance, said Larry Engelstein, 32BJ’s secretary treasurer.
Engelstein said, the unions turned do state legislators, resulting in the bills now pending on both sides of the Hudson.
While New Jersey’s bill awaits approval by the Assembly and Senate, New York’s version has been approved by both houses of its legislature, and now awaits the signature of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Unlike other measures involving the Port Authority, the bills are not bi-state legislation, and do not require passage by both states to become legally binding in either one.
Cryan, who thanked Senate President Steve Sweeney for advancing the bill to the Labor committee, said he was optimistic that Gov. Phil Murphy, a fellow Democrat friendly to organized labor, would sign it if it lands on his desk.
“The governor’s got a history of supporting workers’ rights,” Cryan said.
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