Airport contract workers to strike in New York Wednesday

Aviation Safeguards has stopped workers from wearing union buttons, misrepresented their rights and threatened to fire them for striking, the news release said. The workers are demanding a $15 per hour wage.

Workers said they will start walking off the job at 10 p.m. Wednesday and will picket and hold rallies at JFK and La Guardia airports throughout the 24-hour period.

Security guards notified Delta of the impending strike a week before today’s announcement, in order to give the airline enough time to come up with backup security. “This is the United States of America and there’s a process that is well established on how employees go about letting their employer know if they wish to organize and join a union”.

Delta Air Lines Inc, which contracts Aviation Safeguards according to the union, said it would be “taking measures to ensure that our more than 35,000 customers booked through LaGuardia on Thursday are not affected”.

Last year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey made it a requirement for contractors to pay workers at least $10.10 an hour. Its parent company, Herndon, Virginia-based Command Services Corp., hasn’t immediately returned a call about the strike vote.

“The Port Authority has taken significant steps in recent years to encourage wage and benefit increases for employees of airline contractors at its airports, and will work to avoid disruptions of airline operations at PA airports”, a Port Authority spokesperson said in a statement.

The union says the workers’ efforts to organize have been met with strong-arm tactics that constitute unfair labor practices.

Command Security Chief Executive Officer Craig Coy, said the union’s allegations were false.

“Living wage is a huge issue at the level of the thousands of employees that do this sort of work”, he said. “That should not be happening in our airports, that should not be happening in our country”.

It was not clear how the planned strike might affect travelers.