US: Airlines swim in cash but leave airport workers high and dry

After losing more than $50b in the decade following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, US airlines have been enjoying some financially robust times of late. On the front lines, airline employees are reaping billions of dollars in wage and benefit increases, plus profit-sharing plans that spell record payouts amid record income. At almost $81,000, average airline worker salaries last year were 38% above other US private sector jobs, according to the airlines’ trade group, Airlines for America. Carriers’ wages rose 29% between 2010 and 2015, more than double the national average. Yet this largesse hasn’t been spread equally. If your job is to push a wheelchair through a United terminal, or to check boarding passes for travelers headed to a Delta flight, your pay has been generally unaffected by the industry’s cash boom. “If we really want to make America great again, our airports are a good place to start,” Oliwia Pac, a wheelchair attendant at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, said in an allusion to the president-elect’s campaign slogan. “These jobs used to be good ones that supported a family, but now they’re closer to what you’d find at McDonald’s.” Pac and thousands of others protested at several large US airports this week in a national “Fight for $15” campaign to boost service workers’ hourly wages—and to advance unionization efforts for a variety of fields where low pay is common. Beyond airports, the demonstrations included fast-food restaurant employees, Uber drivers, home health care workers, and college teaching assistants. At airports, these low-paid positions include baggage handlers, wheelchair attendants, skycaps, and aircraft cabin cleaners. Such contract laborers perform work that ostensibly serves the airlines, but they’re employed by companies the carriers hire amid bidding contests that typically hinge on which vendor offers the lowest price.<br/>