Airport baggage handlers protest

Jose Peralta

As reported by Queens Chronicle:

Injustice is the one thing they can’t handle.

About 30 baggage handlers formed a picket line outside Terminal 7 at John F. Kennedy International Airport last Thursday to protest what they called unfair labor practices, meager wages, no healthcare coverage and no paid vacation.

“We feel that as workers, Aviation Safeguard has violated our right of workage,” Pedro Gamboa, who has worked as a baggage handler for four and a half years, said at the picket line. “In terms of wages, respect, dignity and situations where some of us end up working for year after year without paid vacations.”

Baggage handlers for years have been calling on Aviation Safeguard, a subcontractor at JFK, to improve work conditions at the airport and allow the workers to join Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union.

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