Every year, people working in U.S. airports generate $8 billion in profits for the aviation industry. Yet these employees are paid so little they cannot make ends meet. Mothers and fathers who work full-time jobs are forced to rely on public assistance to satisfy their basic family needs.
This is why parents have come together to call for change. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, baggage handlers, terminal cleaners and cabin cleaners at hubs in major cities are calling for better jobs at our airports.
Together with skycaps, wheelchair agents and customer service agents, we are standing in solidarity – and risking arrest – to call attention to the gross injustices and inequality that persist at our airports.
We are demanding Congress take action to ensure taxpayer dollars do not continue to subsidize poverty jobs, and to take concrete measures to ensure investments in our airports are tied to good jobs.
Like the striking Memphis, Tenn., sanitation workers who took action nearly 50 years ago, and with whom King stood at the end of his life, airport workers are standing up to inhuman conditions at work and the daily humiliations of poverty.
This certainly won’t be the last time we stand together to fight for good jobs. Already, more than 70,000 workers have won wage increases and workplace improvements by standing together, taking to the street, marching, protesting and striking.
By standing together, parents are making real change for their families. And we’ll continue to fight together until all airport jobs are good jobs like they once were.
