Local Airport Workers Win a Hard-Fought Battle for $19 an Hour

Workers at Newark, JFK and LaGuardia airports will be getting a raise. The Port Authority announced plans to increase their pay to $19 an hour by 2023.

For thousands of workers, it's been a long time coming.

"When they told me, I had tears coming down because it was so overwhelming," said 49-year-old Andrea Bundy, who cleans cabins at JFK for $13 an hour.

Baggage handlers, wheelchair agents and hundreds of other airport workers have been demanding higher wages and benefits like health insurance for at least six years. Some  like Lakisha Willians, who spoke to WNYC six years ago, lived below the poverty line.

"Basically I've just been at the airport for eight years making the same minimum wage, $7.25, and not seeing no raises and no changes at the airport is very unfair," said Williams, who worked in Newark Airport as a wheelchair attendant. 

But protesting and storming board meetings did little to sway the Port Authority or former chairman John Degnan at the time.

"This is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, we are not a social welfare agency, we weren't created for that purpose," Degnan said at a 2015 board meeting.

Then in 2016, about 14,000 New York and New Jersey airport workers negotiated their first union contract with 32BJ SEIU.

But the future raises will go beyond union members, to 40,000 contracted airport workers. 

New Jersey workers will be getting an even bigger bump, since most have been working for a minimum wage that's lower than that of New York. That has meant workers doing the exact same job in Newark as their counterparts at JFK and LaGuardia, sometimes even for the same airline, were making $2 less an hour. 

The Port Authority board still has to formally approve the hike, which it is expected to do this summer. After that, the raise will be phased in, going up to $15.60 by Sept. 2019.

"We finally got them to see from our point of view — how this can change our lives — and that’s one of the best feeling ever," said 22-year-old Zakiyy Medina, who works as a baggage handler at Newark Airport for $10.10. "We can actually go to work and feel as though we’re making a living."