Newark, NJ, April 15 — Airport workers at the three major New York area airports are beginning to fight back against low wages, meager benefits and unsafe working conditions. They are called “passenger service workers” (PSWs), which include screeners, wheelchair attendants, baggage handlers, skycaps, ticket checkers, cabin cleaners, ramp agents and dispatchers.
Despite union misleadership and attempts to ally the workers with politicians, the workers are in a fighting spirit. About 75 airport workers joined 75 other people at a $15/hr minimum-wage demonstration today. Over 100 workers took copies of CHALLENGE. They chanted loudly as they marched from Newark City Hall to a local McDonald’s restaurant.
Wage Slavery Kills
A Summit on Poverty at a local college here highlighted the dire conditions of these workers, and featured their fighting spirit. Sponsored by SEIU 32B/J, the union organizing the workers, and several community organizations, the presentation started with two short films on organizing efforts in Newark and Philadelphia airports. A rank-and-file worker thanked the union for its organizing campaign, but said that the small wage increase gained by some of the workers (to $10.10/ hr) is nowhere near enough to support a family. She spoke eloquently about how workers must fight back against overwork that she said contributed to the on-the-job death of one of her coworkers.
Another speaker referred to the history of Newark International Airport to illustrate her point that this is a long-term struggle that must continue. Instead of the 3,500 jobs promised by the airline bosses and the Port Authority when the new airport was built in 1969, just 300 jobs materialized. Only a few being positions were filled with Black and Latin workers. Both she and a second speaker connected the current low-wage jobs to the capitalists’ need to exploit all workers, and to super-exploit Black and Latin workers.
That second speaker connected the increasing homelessness in Newark, where there are several tent cities, to the long-term decline in the U.S. of real wages, and of the real minimum wage. For example, the real minimum wage is 20 percent below what it was in 1969; the real minimum wage for skycaps and other positions depending on tips is almost 50 percent below its 1969 value. These pitiful wages mean workers spend a much higher percentage on basic necessities like housing and food. He said that recent studies show that there is an increasing number of employed workers who are homeless. These lower wages increase the value stolen by the capitalists, leading to higher profits for the airline bosses and their sleazy subcontractors.
Union Breeds Illusions
The union’s organizing campaign is based partly on the idea that the airline bosses can be convinced that it is in their interest to raise wages somewhat because there would be less worker turnover, more stable business conditions, and thus more regional growth. This is a deadly illusion. Maximizing profits is required by the laws of capitalist competition. As Karl Marx said, one capitalist kills many. The U.S. airline industry in particular, which now has only four major carriers, has seen decades of cost-cutting in all job classifications, and contracting out of lower-paying positions, creating company war chests that led to three major mergers and now record profits. This consolidation has also been subsidized by the capitalist government. Not including tax-free bonds and other giveaways, after the Sept. 11 attack, the federal government gave or loaned the airlines an additional $15 billion. Little to none of this money has gone into workers’ pockets. Many work for subcontractors who now control positions which were formerly unionized airline jobs. In 2014, the four biggest airlines raked in profits of $8 billion (USA Today, 1/27/15). Meanwhile, according to a 2012 report, the median wage for contracted PSWs is $8/hr, putting a family of four well below the poverty line. Seventeen percent of airport workers rely on Food Stamps to feed their families.
Poverty and racism are the inevitable products of a capitalist system that requires savage competition between the bosses in every industry, and a grinding down of the working class in each industry to the lowest wage possible for survival. But like the rebellion in Ferguson, the struggle of airport workers shows that workers can and will fight back. Only communism will abolish class distinctions and the hunger and homelessness that result from capitalism. Under communism, we will produce according to commitment and share whatever we produce according to need. Communist leadership in the current struggle of airport workers can hasten the day when we consign these horrors of capitalism to the scrap heap of history.