Alaska Airlines’ poverty wages are no joke

SEATTLE (Jan. 29, 2014) — Alaska Airlines, the company that has aggressively fought to defy voters and continue paying poverty wages to Sea-Tac International Airport workers, is raking in such huge profits right now that it’s laughable. Literally.

The following video features Alaska Airlines executives sharing a good laugh with industry analysts about all of their extra cash.

TAKE A STAND! Contact Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden and tell him to stop forcing poverty-wage airport jobs onto the SeaTac community. Click here to send Tilden a message urging him “to stop standing in the way of airport workers’ dreams and the will of the people,” and to drop his company’s legal efforts to deny decent jobs to airport workers.

Alaska Airlines fought to keep SeaTac Prop 1 off the ballot, spent heavily in the campaign against the initiative, and after it was approved by voters, sent its attorneys to court to try to overturn Prop 1. A King County Superior Court judge ended up striking down a major portion of the measure.

For now, about 1,600 hotel and parking lot workers in SeaTac have gotten raises to $15 an hour, paid sick leave, and tip protections. But some 4,700 baggage handlers, car rental workers, and other airport workers have been left out, pending a legal challenge of the judge’s ruling filed by Prop 1 supporters at the Washington State Supreme Court.

Alaska Airlines is among the airlines that hires low-wage contractors to do much of the work that used to be done by their employees who earned a decent wage and benefits. For example, Alaska baggage handlers earned as much as $16 an hour back in 2008 as employees of Alaska Airlines. Then the company fired them and hired a a contractor to replace them, and today they make just $9.66, barely above minimum wage.

Please contact Alaska Airlines CEO Brad Tilden and tell him to stop forcing poverty-wage airport jobs onto the SeaTac community. Click here to send Tilden a message. Thank you.