SEIU’s Logan Airport Drive Shows Safety Still Relevant in Organizing, Advocates Say

The Service Employees International Union has begun using worker safety as a rallying point in an unfolding organizing drive at Logan Airport in Boston.

In recent complaints filed with the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, several of the roughly 1,500 airplane cleaners who work at Logan have said they are exposed to: toxic cleaning chemicals; human waste; and sharp needles, scissors, toothpicks and razors that lay hidden in the recesses of the planes’ seats and seatback pockets.

“The first time sanitary liquid from the toilet fell on my face, I got an infection on my mouth,” wrote Jean Carlos Torres, an employee of cleaning company ReadyJet Inc., in an October 2013 OSHA complaint.

“I explained to the doctor what happened and he told me it was because of the blue liquid,” Torres continued. “He said I shouldn’t be working with that chemical. I told my supervisors I couldn’t work on the lavatory, but they said, ‘No, you have to.’ ”

Bloodborne Pathogens, Needle Sticks.

Other Logan cleaners have said they aren’t given personal protective equipment; aren’t provided with water on hot days; are barred from using bathrooms to clean themselves; and are crammed so tightly into transport vans that some of them must sit in the laps of others.

As part of SEIU Local 32BJ’s organizing drive, union staff have acted as workers’ designees in filing OSHA complaints and helped stage a rally April 3 at the airport.

“There are thousands of workers at Logan who have the right to a union, to have decent wages and benefits and safety and security,” Roxana Rivera, district director of SEIU Local 32BJ, told Bloomberg BNA April 11. “The situation is only going to get worse with time, so we really need to get all the stakeholders together.”

Rivera said the union has also helped some workers demand that their employers improve safety standards, but “largely the contractors have refused to do so.”

The workers are employed by a range of subcontractors, such as ReadyJet, Airway Cleaners and Flight Services & Systems. Those subcontractors are, in turn, hired by airlines including Delta Air Lines Inc., JetBlue Airways Corp., American Airlines Inc. and United Airlines Inc.

ReadyJet has run afoul of OSHA before. In 2012, the agency, responding to a complaint, charged the company with six violations, three of which were serious. All six were settled informally.

ReadyJet and Airway Cleaners couldn’t be reached for an interview. Flight Services & Systems declined to comment.

Safety Still an Enticement to Workers.

The Logan organizing drive has shown unions that worker safety still can be used as a draw to attract new members, labor scholars say.

Over the years, many unions have downplayed safety and health in their pitch to new members, largely because the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970 has enshrined into law many of the protections for which workers used to bargain.

But OSHA’s effectiveness in actually reducing workplace injuries and illnesses has been spotty, creating a void that unions can exploit to appeal to new members, Robert Smith, a labor professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Bloomberg BNA April 14.

Eric Frumin, safety and health director at the labor federation Change to Win, agreed, saying that, even with the OSH Act, it matters.

“Workers still need a voice, a way to make their voices heard,” he said. “If you’re waiting around for an OSHA inspector to be that voice, you’ve got a long wait.”

OSHA’s standards don’t apply broadly enough, aren’t always up-to-date, aren’t backed by an inspection staff big enough to monitor all workplaces, and don’t carry fines severe enough to ensure compliance in the absence of inspections, Smith said.

The most effective way unions try to bargain for health and safety committees is with worker representation and expanded rights to refuse unsafe work, Linda Delp, director of the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program at the University of California Los Angeles, told Bloomberg BNA April 16.

Chamber Questions Role of Unions.

Marc Freedman, executive director of labor law policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, countered that a union isn’t always the best route to securing workers’ safety and health protections.

“It is incumbent on employers to take workplace safety issues seriously, but having a union workplace is not the only way that this can happen,” Freedman told Bloomberg BNA April 30. “Many, many, many nonunion workplaces have very strong safety programs and these employers take their employee concerns seriously.”

Freedman also said he “couldn’t accept the idea that the continuing trend of lower injuries and fatalities is being driven by less than 7 percent of the workforce,” referring to the unionized segment of the private sector workforce.

Entree to Walk-Around Rights?

He further said the Logan situation reminds him of OSHA’s interpretation letter last April, in which it ruled that employees can be represented by anyone they authorize during inspections of nonunion workplaces 68 DLR A-8, 4/9/13.

“What you’re seeing here is the SEIU seeing an opportunity to use safety issues as an entree,” Freedman said. The idea might be “to have an SEIU representative be part of an OSHA walk-around inspection in a nonunion workplace, with the prospect of an organizing campaign hanging in the air,” he said.

Similarly, Edwin Foulke, OSHA administrator under George W. Bush, said he doesn’t see any advantage for unionized workers in terms of improving safety and health, largely because public pressures are already forcing employers to better their safety records.

“Companies now realize that they can’t afford to have a poor safety record or they’re not going to be able to bid on jobs,” Foulke, now an industry attorney with Fisher & Phillips LLP, told Bloomberg BNA April 30.

Further, nonunion workers still have whistle-blower protections under the OSH Act, Foulke said.

‘System Is Working.’

Orley Ashenfelter, an economics professor at Princeton University, told Bloomberg BNA April 14 that nonwage issues are still important organizing tools. Frumin, too, said the passage of the OSH Act hasn’t changed the “basic dynamic of people organizing to take action.”

“Laws come and laws go, governments come and governments go, and the problems are still there,” Frumin said. “Workers need protection. They have the ability to think for themselves and decide enough is enough.”

The Logan effort shows that “the system is working,” Frumin said. “Workers are scared, and SEIU gave them help,” he said.

Unions also can entice workers by offering them better compensation for dangerous jobs, Ashenfelter said.

Research clearly shows that dangerous work is better compensated in union environments, according to Ashenfelter, making unions “a good investment” in hazardous industries.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Lee in Washington at stephenlee@bna.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Stimson at jstimson@bna.com