Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
Whether coming from extreme poverty or a professional career that allowed them to live comfortably, most refugees here find themselves with a menial job that pays next to nothing. Just as airport travelers have little choice other than to pay the expensive concession stand prices throughout O’Hare and Midway airports – operated by retailers with lucrative city contracts – so do refugees have little choice but to accept the low paying airport jobs. As someone who worked for an airline for 16 years I can also attest to the fact that working in an airport is stressful no matter what job you do. Chicago is not cheap, and refugees working the airport jobs also have long, expensive commutes, while struggling to pay high rents.
Although Chicago city contractors have long had to pay living wages, a legal loophole allowed airport concessionaires to avoid the requirement. The retailers, however, may finally have to pay their employees a “living wage” of $11.18-an-hour if Chicago aldermen pass a new ordinance, according to article at Progress Illinois:
As the City of Chicago prepares to let out a wave of contracts for food and retail shops at O’Hare and Midway airports, new legislation seeks to ensure that concession workers at both facilities — the folks who pour the coffee, ring up book sales, fry hamburgers, and the like — are not unceremoniously dumped as the process moves forward.
The “Stable Jobs Stable Airports Ordinance” (PDF), in fact, would remake labor relations for concession employees should it it make it through the council thicket and find the signature of the current or next mayor of Chicago. It also stands out as one of the most significant expansions of the Chicago’s living wage rules since those stipulations were added to city code in the late 1990s…
…O’Hare and Midway concessions are lucrative, as anyone who has purchased a meal or a magazine while waiting for a flight out of Chicago knows well. In a request-for-proposals (PDF) for 22 specialty retail and services concessions at O’Hare, for example, the Department of Aviation reports that total sales for the 63 food, specialty concessions, news and gift stores, and duty free shops in the airport’s terminal one totaled $82.8 million in 2009. O’Hare has three terminals, of course, with 160 outlets in all, this RFP says. A “concession open house” for food and beverage slots at O’Hare and Midway, scheduled for tomorrow, will kick off a different bidding process.
Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd Ward), one of the chief sponsors of the new ordinance, pointed out this morning that the concessions operators have a “captive audience” as fliers wait to board and often get multi-year contracts to run their outlets. Such business conditions mean concessionaires should be able to pay its employees a living wage, even if that means a price increase for some items… Read more here
Let’s hope that the ordinance passes so these workers and their children are not victims of a society that cares little for the 99%, while enriching the 1% who control most of the money.
