A corporate contract changes hands. People lose their jobs – not because the jobs go away, but because they’re given to someone else.
That’s what’s happened to five of 14 skycaps who used to work at the Alaska Airlines curb at Sea-Tac Airport. Last month, Seattle-based Alaska switched the contractor who runs its baggage and curb service, choosing Bags Inc. over ACSI and Huntleigh, the subcontractor who employed the skycaps. After it got the contract, Bags immediately gave notice to the skycaps — some of whom have worked the curb for 20 years or more — that they would be laid off March 25.
Nine retained their jobs, however, after the skycaps and their union, Local 6 of the Service Employees International Union, lobbied members of the Port of Seattle Commission, which oversees airport operations. “Bags was not going to [keep] the workers,” says SEIU organizer Fred Prockiw. But, “We went around and met with Port commissioners and Bags took nine out of the 14.”
The five who lost their jobs have been replaced by young new hires, says SEIU researcher Carrie Fassler. The union is still trying to get their jobs back, and to get Bags to honor the union contract that originally covered all 14, but Fassler says it doesn’t look good. “We are trying to argue successorship,” she says, but “the contracting-out system makes it difficult.”
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