Vol. 81/No. 37 October 9, 2017
Chicago airport ‘pay raise’ gives up workers’ rights
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%
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home