NEW YORK – Just hours before more than 1,000 workers were scheduled to walk off their jobs at New York City's two airports, a settlement was announced with their employer, a subcontractor for Delta Air Lines.

Baggage handlers and security officers allege Aviation Safeguards had been illegally interfering with their efforts to join a union.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Hector Figueroa, president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), says the company had agreed to the workers' demand.

"We have won today a significant step forward," he says. "The right to bargain, sit down with the company and improve our jobs and our lives."

The union says baggage handlers are among the 12,000 workers at LaGuardia and JFK airports who have been fighting for union membership and higher wages for the past two years.

Mary Kay Henry, international president of SEIU, told the crowd the success of the organizing effort in New York is "just the beginning."

"We intend to make this breakthrough a signal of hope to millions of workers at airports who know that poverty wages don't fly," she says.

Organizers say the next step is to get the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the airports, to mandate a living wage to prevent airlines and their service companies from simply switching to non-union subcontractors.


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Despite recent improvements in Black unemployment rates, a new report reveals Black Americans continue to face significant disparities in the labor market, and Virginians are no exception.

The report estimates in Virginia alone, Black men need about 16,000 more jobs to reach parity with white men in the workforce, and it shows the racial employment gap remains a costly burden for Black workers.

Algernon Austin, director of race and economic Justice at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said while Black unemployment fell to 5.5% in 2022, the lowest rate in over 50 years, the positive statistic obscures deeper issues.

"Black America still needs about 1.4 million more people working to have the same employment rate as white America," Austin pointed out. "We still have a significant need for jobs."

The research is from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. For Black Americans who are employed, Austin noted the data show significant wage disparities and the employment gap is costing them about $60 billion a year.

While policymakers discuss solutions like subsidized employment programs, Austin emphasized targeted actions, like raising the minimum wage, are crucial to addressing systemic inequities.

"This is America's historic problem," Austin stressed. "I mean, this problem begins in the enslavement of the Black population, and then Jim Crow - and then, the continuing discrimination in the labor market."

In the most recent figures for August, the U.S. labor market saw modest job growth but Black unemployment remained at just over 6%, significantly higher than the 3.8% rate for white workers.

The report highlighted despite lower Black unemployment levels, structural barriers from hiring discrimination to limited access to high-paying jobs continue to impede economic progress for Black Americans.


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The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada this week heard local leaders' concerns during consumer sessions, where people protested increasing utility bills from NV Energy and Southwest Gas and challenged what they see as the companies' deepening dependence on fossil fuels.

Kristee Watson, executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, contended that NV Energy wants to push for methane-gas spending - a fuel source she said has "dangerous" implications for the environment, but also would affect Nevadans' pocketbooks.

"When we are reliant on a dirty, volatile source of energy such as methane gas," she said, "Nevadans are always at risk of spikes, and riding the wave of whatever this commodity is going to cost."

Watson pointed to what she called the "unpredictability" of fossil fuels as energy sources. Her organization and others are asking the PUCN to prioritize clean, affordable and reliable energy. They cite solar power as an example that could not only benefit Nevada, but neighboring states as well.

In a statement, NV Energy said, "In Southern Nevada, bills will be lower by the end of 2024 than they were in 2023 ... we've heard from our customers, and we always work to keep bills affordable."

Dr. Joanne Leovy, steering chair for Nevada Clinicians for Climate Action, said her group believes the PUCN should make climate goals a top priority and start considering public health implications in their decisionmaking. She said that is something not currently mandated, and called it "a shame," noting that the health costs related to fossil fuels are high.

"Really," she said, "by every delay in transitioning fully to renewable energy, it's a lost opportunity, both to improve health and to reduce costs."

Leovy said the impacts include air pollution, which causes or exacerbates a variety of health conditions that directly affect communities. The groups have put information about the impacts of utility energy decisions online at utilitywatchnv.org.

Nevada U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford - D-Las Vegas - has introduced legislation that would aim to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers across the country, and also eliminate federal taxes on tips - a proposal both presidential nominees have said they would support.

It isn't the first such proposal in Congress.

Horsford noted that a disproportionate number of tipped workers across the country are women and people of color, whom he described as making "poverty wages."

He told his fellow House members the Tipped Income Protection and Support Act is about economic justice, and recognizing that service workers are "the backbone" of the U.S. economy.

"So, to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we cannot delay this action any longer," said Horsford. "We must act to ensure that every worker, regardless of their job, can earn a fair wage and keep more of what they earn."

Critics of the idea point out that many tipped employees don't make enough to pay income taxes, so eliminating taxes on tips wouldn't affect them.

The minimum cash wage for tipped workers in the U.S. is just over $2 an hour. Nevada has already abolished the subminimum wage for tipped workers, who now make at least $12 an hour.

Relying on customers to pay the bulk of tipped workers' wages exposes these workers to "tremendous instability of income," according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Across the country, the Institute also found poverty rates for tipped workers are more than twice as high as for non-tipped workers. Horsford called that unacceptable.

"No one should have to depend on the whims of a good tip - which is not a guarantee," said Horsford, "in order to make ends meet."

Horsford said his plan, unlike other Republican-led initiatives which would solely exempt tips from federal taxes, would go a step further and eliminate the federal subminimum wage - which he called "the crux of the problem."




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