Airport Jobs Campaign

Since August of 2009, CASE has been engaged in an effort to organize community members to fight for a better jobs policy in the City of Phoenix, beginning with Sky Harbor Airport.

The heart of that Airport Jobs Campaign is our effort to protect the jobs of 1,000 working people in Terminal 4 Food Service and Airport Parking.  Right now, the City of Phoenix Aviation Administration is in the process of issuing "Requests for Proposals" (RFPs) for those two concessions in an attempt to attract bidders and raise Airport revenues.  In the past, that process could have cost many people currently working in Parking and Terminal 4 Food Service their jobs, as a new concessionaire would be under no obligation to rehire the people employed by its predecessor.  Such an event would be disastrous for our community as of many those Terminal Sevices workers--70% of whom are people of color and most of whom hardly earn enough to pay their basic living expenses--would face losing their livelihoods, their homes, and their health insurance.

Since August, CASE has led a community effort to move the City of Phoenix to adopt a "worker retention" policy that would require the successful bidders for Parking and Terminal 4 Food Service to retain the current workers.  After building a network of partners from across the city, we held more than 20 community presentations at churches, neighborhood associations, precinct meetings, and college classes; 3 large community leadership meetings for strategy and training discussions; gathered 3,000 petition signatures; mobilized hundreds of community members for 2 rallies; and brought airport workers and community members to dozens of meetings with City Council members, Aviation officials, and Mayor Gordon.

The end result of that process came on May 5, when the Aviation, Downtown, and Economy subcommittee of the Phoenix City Council voted unanimously to include a worker-retention requirement in the RFP criteria for Terminal 4 Food Service that they were sending to the full City Council for their approval.  In doing so, they chose to include CASE's worker retention language over the City of Phoenix Management's stated preference that current workers be guaranteed only an interview, and that the concessionare retain the right to make all personnel decisions.

A few steps still remain in our network's attempt to create job security for those 1,000 Parking and Food Service Workers, but we are well on our way to creating an historic victory for working people in Phoenix!