Tell Alaska Airlines CEO: Stop pushing poverty pay in SeaTac

SEATAC (Jan. 3, 2014) — Last week, at the urging of Alaska Airlines executives and other corporate interests at Sea-Tac International Airport, a King County Superior Court judge struck down a major portion of Proposition 1, the $15-an-hour minimum wage initiative approved by SeaTac voters in November. Judge Andrea Darvas ruled that workers at airport are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Port of Seattle and therefore are not subject to Prop 1.

So for now, about 1,600 hotel and parking lot workers in SeaTac get 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.

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.

The ruling by Judge Darvas was a frustrating development for airport workers like Alex Hoopes and Evelyn Olano.

“My first priority is my health and having enough food,” said Hoopes, who used to make $21 an hour with benefits but lost his benefits and had his pay cut to $9.50 an hour after his airline job was outsourced to a multinational airport contractor.

For 52-year-old Olano, passage of Prop 1 potentially meant that “she could quit her second job, save for retirement and buy her first new dress in years.”

These are real people, with real lives, struggling to get by on poverty pay. They simply want good pay and basic rights for their families, so they can live in dignity, but companies like Alaska Airlines are standing in their way.

Please send a message to Alaska’s CEO Brad Tilden to stop using the courts to block good jobs!