Faith Leaders to Conduct Prayer Vigil at City Council for Living Wages at Airport

PHILADELPHIA - May 9, 2013 - PRLog -- Contact: David Koppisch, 215-219-3950


Clergy and lay leaders representing 40 city congregations will pray outside City Council Chambers at 9:30am, Thursday, May 9th (Room 400 City Hall, Philadelphia) that the Council and Mayor Nutter will stand with 1,500 workers at the Philadelphia International Airport who currently make poverty wages.

At issue is the soon-to-be approved lease agreement, between the City and U.S. Airways, which covers 1,500 sky caps, baggage handlers, airplane cabin cleaners and some security and janitorial positions.  

Most of these workers are paid $7.25 an hour or less; many earn $5.50 or $2.50 an hour plus tips.  As a result, they live in poverty.  Tara R., a baggage handler employed by a U.S. Airways subcontractor, recently told a gathering of 3,300 POWER members and supporters: “I am paid only $325 every other week, my rent is more than that.  I have a daughter who wants to graduate college – how on Earth do I help her on this pay?”

The lease agreement is seen by the Nutter Administration as the key to the $6B Airport expansion project the City and the Airlines have been negotiating for the two years.  But POWER and its allies are urging the Administration, and Council, to use the lease agreement as an opportunity to bring these 1,500 jobs in line with those covered by the city’s existing 21st Century Minimum Wage Standard, which sets starting wages for all City-contracted jobs at $10.88/hour, plus benefits.

“The Mayor and City Council have a choice: do they stand with U.S. Airways’ CEO Doug Parker who earned $5.5M last year and his shareholders who continue to earn record profits – or will they stand with people like Tara who can barely feed their families?” asks Bishop Dwayne Royster, Executive Director of POWER.

POWER – comprised of 40 diverse faith congregations representing more than 25,000 Philadelphians – and their labor allies (SEIU32BJ and UNITE/HERE) are urging the Mayor and City Council to include the following standards into the lease agreement with U.S. Airways:

·         Application of the City’s existing Living Wage standard for 1,500 service jobs

·         A training fund and system to increase city residents’ preparedness for Airport jobs

·         A “First Source Hiring System” to ensure that disadvantaged workers receive preference in the application process for such jobs.

·         Labor harmony between the service unions and the major Airport employers

“We are the poorest big city in America,” says Frances Upshaw, a POWER leader.  “The Mayor and the Council can take a simple, concrete step towards ending poverty in our city, by setting a more humane starting wage standard for these 1,500 workers who do important work for Philadelphia.”   Thursday’s prayer vigil is part of a larger, coordinated movement to win policies tying public development dollars and support to living wage jobs for city residents.