The Good Jobs Strategy - Airport Employee Wages

The Good Jobs Strategy

Giving aerodrome workers a better wage could brand their employers more successful, too

Feb. sixteen, 2016

On Martin Luther Male monarch, Jr. 24-hour interval, employees at the Philadelphia Airport joined a one solar day national protest to bring attention to the fact that many of them are making minimum wage, or even less. Despite the fact that Mayor Nutter signed an executive order in May, 2022 stipulating that by early 2022 all city contractors be paid a minimum wage of $10.88 an 60 minutes, some airport contractors had institute means to circumvent the new rule.

This means for many domestic business travelers and international vacationers, the first Philadelphians they get to meet are laborers making $vii.25 an hour plus tips.

This is important, because an drome is a traveler's kickoff impression of a city. I become through our airport maybe x times a year, and it'due south not bad, for a large east declension city. It doesn't have the sleek shuttles of New York's JFK, nor the gleaming architecture of Boston's Logan, but it is serviceable and well-laid out. And it'southward a damned sight better than the rusted mail service-apocalyptic hellscape full of hostile trolls that is Newark. But having start time visitors welcomed to Philadelphia by exhausted and underpaid workers sends the wrong bulletin about where we are headed as a urban center.

Employers rent "Independent contractors" with stress on independence . You're independent now, like the Minutemen, like the soldiers at Valley Forge! And let's not even talk about urine testing for drugs, the program that ensures that no i who cleans aeroplane toilets always has any fun on weekends.

Afterward the ane day strike, which disrupted no flights and acquired very little fuss, the contractors, every bit is usual in these situations, had no comment.

No comment.

Just like they had no comment after a similar protest of airport workers in November . Only like they would not comment on Sarina Santos, a luggage handler who was fired in May for "job functioning bug" shortly after she publicly complained nigh her wages to POWER , a faith based social justice organization. Nor would they comment on why, exactly, they had still non managed to pay workers the wages that had been promised to them in June of 2015. Or on the lack of benefits offered to employees.

No comment is the ultimate insult. It is as if management had decided to only put their fingers in their ears and sing, "Nyah Nyah Nyah, I can't hear you."

I've been writing about labor in America for 20 years, and I know how this volition go. The public relations departments and CEOs know that if they simply keep their mouths close and wait information technology out, protests usually simply fade away. The dissatisfaction will ossify into a residue of full general bitterness and high turnover, but the corporation will live on. The workers only don't accept the resources to keep making a fuss, and they need their jobs. In that location will always be a stack of applications at homo resources.

The high turnover volition result in new hires getting to hear more and more corporate doublespeak, which is used as a substitute for money and benefits. "Management" positions will be offered, and snapped up by eager employees who imagine a career position (only to realize that the term is an alibi not to pay overtime, and involves little actual authority). The new employees will be shown videos on sexual harassment and racial sensitivity in the workplace, just anyone who ever complains near such things will go fired for "job performance" problems. (If you look long plenty, an employee volition miss a train and come in late, or get sick and miss work, and so it's over. That'll teach them to exist a malcontent.) And permit's not even talk well-nigh urine testing for drugs, the plan that ensures that no 1 who cleans airplane toilets ever has any fun on the weekends.

Positions as "Contained contractors" volition be advertised, with stress on independence , a true American ideal. You're independent now, similar the Minutemen, like the soldiers at Valley Forge! Joke'due south on you: It'due south just a legal term pregnant you don't go any benefits. Oh, simply they will promise benefits—in the afar future. Companies with high turnover honey to make grandiose offers of futurity generosity, like stock options subsequently six years, when their charts and graphs point that so many employees will have quit by so that these benefits will never take to be distributed. What person applying for a minimum wage task is thinking near stock options, or their children's educational fund, to which the company volition donate matching funds ? They are trying to stay afloat, to keep their power on and food on the table. But that pamphlet makes everything audio so good, like the visitor is investing in their future. Information technology's simply their present the visitor doesn't care about.

Treating workers better really improves a company's performance. Costco, which provides 90 percent of its employees with health insurance and pays an average wage of $21 an hour, sports a turnover rate less than a quarter of its main competitor, Sam'south Order.

The problem hither is definitely solvable—if corporations are willing. Both McDonald'southward and Walmart , two companies with a reputation for underpaying and abusing their employees, decided to offering their workers a livable minimum wage. They did and then only after years of bad printing and employee protests. There is notwithstanding an attitude of palpable reluctance, and these raises come merely a brief time ahead of bodily legislation which would force their manus, giving them bragging rights to crow about how they don't demand government to tell them to exist decent human beings.

What is needed in place of this is a realization that treating workers amend actually improves the company'due south performance. Costco, which provides 90 percent of its employees with wellness insurance and pays an average wage of $21 an hr, sports a turnover rate less than a quarter of its master competitor, Sam's Club. Low turnover is a key benefit in retail considering it gives the company more than knowledgeable staff, which improves client service and increases sales. When Walmart did finally raise wages for its workers, it besides reported increased sales, because the employees spent much of the extra money at…Wal-mart.

In fact, treating workers better is seen by some companies as not just decent, but as an actual business concern policy, chosen the "good jobs strategy." Essentially: When labor is treated not but as an expense, only equally an integral part of the whole business, everybody benefits. Southwest Airlines, In-and-Out Burger and The Container Store are just a few of the companies that have seen financial growth as a result of this improved employee handling.

Hopefully the contractors at the Philadelphia Airdrome can bring themselves to answer to their employees, and to address their issues, without years of public shaming and aggressive strikes. That would give this city an airport staff that really felt good about their jobs. And that would be real leadership and teamwork that could make the urban center proud.

Iain Levison is the author of A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, 9 That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember and the novels How To Rob An Armored Motorcar and Since The Layoffs.

Header Photograph: Flickr/Fibonacci Blue

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/airport-employee-wages-the-good-jobs-strategy/