Just when you think your holiday travel is safe, the Service Employees International Union is ready to help ruin the holidays. Employees of private contractors at New York airports congregated at LaGuardia’s Terminal B on Tuesday to protest their wages – what they call “poverty wages and poor working conditions.”
The workers, from Airway Cleaners, PrimeFlight, AirServ, and Aviation Safeguard, suggested that the wages are somehow affecting travelers – and actually made the case that they’re doing a bad job thanks to their impoverishment. Why? According to the SEIU, low-bid contracting has driven down wages, with one study suggesting that outsourcing of baggage porter jobs tripling from 25 percent to 84 percent over the last two decades, and depressing real wages in New York by 45 percent.
The problem for the SEIU is that according to the Airline Quality Ratings, presented by the Wichita State University and Purdue University, “For the fourth consecutive year, the performance of the nation’s leading carriers improved.” Overall, 10 of the 15 carriers rated in 2010 and 2011 improved in 2012. That included ratings in “on-time performance, baggage handling, involuntary denied boardings and customer complaints.”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.