MIAMI _ Twelve Miami airline catering workers for Sky Chefs and representatives of their union sat down on the asphalt in a row, blocking incoming traffic on the Arrivals road in front of Miami International Airport's Terminal D Tuesday night.
Miami-Dade airport administrators and confused travelers looked on. More than 100 fellow workers chanted in support.
After officers warned the demonstrators three times to get up, yelling over the sounds of their "One job should be enough" chants, police escorted them into a van and issued citations for civil disobedience.
Demonstrations like Tuesday's have made Miami International Airport a symbol of the city's affordability crisis. The county's living wage law exempts many companies, including Sky Chefs, whose 600 workers at MIA serve primarily American Airlines flights. Airline catering workers are protesting low wages and high healthcare costs.
Samantha De Los Reyes, 25, clapped her hands to the beat of the chants Tuesday as her colleagues sat down on the road. De Los Reyes has been working for Sky Chefs at MIA for three years. She said she makes $11 an hour and is studying at Miami Dade College to be a radiologist. She lives with her mother who also works at the airport.
"We're asking for a dignified salary and health care," she said. "We've had negotiations; we haven't seen results."
Miami-Dade County passed a living wage ordinance in 2018 requiring companies that do business at the county-run airport to bring workers' wages to $13.23 per hour with health insurance, or $16.40 without. But companies such as Sky Chefs that are not on-site airport vendors are currently exempt, due to a court decision. Without the living-wage rule, Sky Chefs workers are subject only to Florida's minimum wage law, currently set at $8.46 an hour.
The average hourly salary for a Miami Sky Chefs worker is $12.25, and only 19% of employees were enrolled in company health insurance in 2018, according to the airline workers' union Unite Here Local 355. Sky Chefs offers healthcare for its employees, but it costs more than $50 a week, and many Miami workers say it is too expensive for them.
In June, more than 11,000 airline catering workers in 28 cities voted to authorize a strike. A national mediation board has not yet given the group permission to strike under the Railway Labor Act, which regulates when and whether airline and railway workers may strike.
In the meantime, workers said they hope American Airlines, which contracts with Sky Chefs to cater its flights at MIA, will require the company to increase workers' wages and lower their healthcare costs. American Airlines reported a profit of $1.4 billion in 2018. In a statement, company spokesperson Martha Pantin said the company is confident that negotiations between Sky Chefs and the airline workers' union will resolve these issues.
"We are not in a position to control the outcome of their negotiations or dictate what wages or benefits are agreed upon between the catering companies and their employees," Pantin said via email.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins disagrees. She said she is working on legislation that would require the county to consider how companies treat their workers when determining which companies can do business at the airport.
"American is choosing to drive their costs to rock bottom on the backs of our workers and drive their profits through the roof," she said.
Sky Chefs said in an emailed statement that the company has been negotiating with the workers in good faith. "Our company has offered improvements in wages and is discussing numerous other issues covered by our collective bargaining agreement," the statement said.
Airport Director Lester Sola said the county believes permitees like Sky Chefs should be required to pay the living wage. A case that will determine this issue is pending before the Florida Supreme Court. In the litigation, a Miami man is challenging whether another airport company should be exempted from the living wage law.
The Miami sit-in was part of a nationwide demonstration that happened at 20 airports across the country during Tuesday's holiday travel rush.
