Portrait of minimum-wage workers A ccording to a study conducted last
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4 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2014 year by the Urban League, service workers at Philadelphia International Airport (baggage handlers, aircraft cleaners, wheelchair attendants, etc.) generally earn about $7.85 an hour— including tips. Skycaps earn $3.90 an hour as a basic wage (some get even less), while wheelchair attendants re ceive $5.76 (tips boost their earnings to about $6.50).
Many have to work second jobs, if they can find them, in order to make ends meet.
Many of their jobs were once per formed by airline employees, but in re cent years the airlines have shed these workers in their drive to lower labor costs and substantially raise their prof its. These jobs have now been given to private contractors who pay substandard wages and no benefits.
Wheelchair attendant Tina Russell told Urban League interviewers: “My employer, Prime Flight, pays me $6 per hour, and sometimes I get tips from the passengers. But a lot of times I get no tips at all. I make $325 every two weeks. And I pay $650 per month in rent. It’s not hard to do the math: by the end of the month, I have nothing left. And I haven’t even started paying my bills. “I have to borrow $20 here, $20 there. I get $300 in food stamps. But I’m al ways broke. I don’t have enough money to eat. How can someone who works full-time in the richest country go hun gry?” — M.S. April 26 to kick off the campaign, under the slogan “Onto the ballot, into the streets!” The decision to file the signatures in June will depend on whether or not the city coun cil has already passed a $15 minimum wage measure without significant loopholes. Kshama Sawant, a member of Socialist Al ternative who was elected to Seattle’s city council last November, is making the $15 wage one of her major concerns. Big business interests in Seattle, how ever, have been pushing back against the proposed measure—calling for exemptions such as counting the money that their em ployees receive in tips as part of the $15 wage. In many cases, deducting tips from wages would result in no raise at all for hard-pressed employees. Activists in “15 Now” have been firm in stating that, while it might be reasonable to grant subsidies to
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Democracy Now!