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View Full Version : LAX Workers Not Really Up In Arms After All




angelatc
11-19-2012, 06:19 PM
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/11/lax_airport_workers_strike_wednesday_thanksgiving_ eve.php

No strike, no walk out.


The confusion arose earlier today when Andrew Gross-Gaitan, the director of the Southern California Airports Division of SEIU, was interviewed on KNX radio. CBS Los Angeles quoted (http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/11/16/thousands-of-lax-workers-set-for-walkout-on-thanksgiving-eve/) Gross-Gaitan saying, "It's entirely possible there will be significant travel delays."
What he actually said was, "We will be marching down Century Boulevard, and it is entirely possible that there will be significant traffic delays." (Emphasis ours.)


Joe Conlon, Regional Vice President for Aviation Safeguards, the company that employs 465 workers in areas like baggage handling, cargo screening, wheelchair assistance and security, tells a different story. He says the employees left the union voluntarily.

and


Edgar Rivas has worked as security guard for an Aviation Safeguards at LAX for six years. He backs up Conlon's claim that the employees left the union voluntarily only a few years after joining.

"I was pro-union at one point," Rivas says. That was three years ago though, before he and his co-workers organized. The way he tells it, SEIU worked hard to convince employees to demand a union contract, and eventually they did. Once the union had the contract, Rivas says, they stopped caring about workers at the airport.

"If any employee had any problems or complaints they would reach out to the union, and the union never really did anything--they never really checked up on us. Once they came and they got the contract, they disappeared," Rivas says.

He says now that he and his co-workers have left the union, he's making two dollars more an hour. He prefers the different insurance too--it's a PPO, as opposed to the HMO with family benefits he had while he was with the union.

:D