Cabin cleaners, attendants and other workers at Los Angeles International Airport began a three-day-long fast today to protest what they claim is the practice of employers to withhold breaks or “steal” wages from their workers.
In an action timed to coincide with the Thanksgiving travel season, nearly a dozen employees for two airport contractors, Aviation Safeguards and Scientific Concepts, say they plan to subsist only on liquids inside the Tom Bradley International Terminal for three days and sleep at a nearby church.
Officials from the two companies and the airport were not immediately available for comment.
Tim Maddox, executive board member of SEIU-USWW, a union that represents many of the workers at LAX, alleged the two companies “are violating workers’ rights, whether it be around breaks, stolen break money,” or refusing to negotiate union contracts.
Maddox, who works at LAX as a wheelchair attendant, said the workers are taking part in the fast to tell the two companies, airlines and the city agency that operates LAX that “we want responsible contractors, people that are going to do the right thing by the workers and by the public.”
Maddox said the problems are occurring amid more pressure on short- staffed cabin cleaners to clean airplanes quicker, with airlines needing faster turnaround because more
