NO LIVING WAGE FOR AIRPORT AIDES

To most of us, they are invisible.

They are the wheelchair assistants at airports, the folks we rush past on our way to somewhere else.

They push elderly and disabled passengers through the concourses; sometimes, they lift them directly into their seats on the planes. Many of the assistants are elderly themselves; some have physical or mental disabilities.

Some are retirees just looking for fun money or a way to meet people. Others augment meager fixed incomes. For many, though, this is their only income, and they must rely on our tips to make minimum wage. Too often, they don’t.

My friend Carol was volunteering at a homeless shelter last spring when she met one of these wheelchair assistants.

“She works full-time, and she’s homeless,” she told me. “She pushes wheelchairs for Continental at the airport and makes only $3.50 an hour.”

Until recently, this worker and her husband of twenty-seven years had lived in their van. She worked for Flight Services and Systems Inc., which Continental hires to provide a variety of airport services, including wheelchair assistants.

“I like my job,” she told me. “I meet a whole bunch of different people, and I get to walk, which is good for me.”

When I asked about her wages, she hesitated, asking that I not identify her because she was afraid of losing her job.

“I make $3.50 an hour,” she said. “The rest I’m supposed to make in tips. Some days, I can make between five and twenty dollars a day. Other days?” She shook her head. “Other days, not so good. Yesterday I had seven trips. Not all tipped. One tipped one dollar. Three tipped a total of fifteen dollars. Today, I had only three trips.”

She showed me a recent two-week pay slip. For 86.75 hours of work, her take-home pay was $265.42, with $66 in tips declared as taxable income.

“Did you make sixty-six dollars in tips?”

She shook her head. “Not this time,” she said. “Maybe next time?”

I since have talked to more than two dozen wheelchair assistants at various airports, including Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Not one makes minimum wage. In Cleveland, they all make $3.50 an hour.

A few said they make decent tips. Most, though, said that, even with tips, their income doesn’t meet the federal minimum wage of $5.15.

FSS insists that they can make up the difference in tips but also threatens reprimands if they solicit tips.

Company representatives offer the familiar defense for low wages: “It’s the industry standard,” Julia Omidpanah said.

Continental spokeswoman Julia King said the FSS employees’ hourly wage was not the airline’s concern.

“We contract [with FSS] for the service,” she said. “We don’t get specifically into wages.”

Might Continental get specifically involved now?

“I’m not saying no one cares,” said King, “but we understand that a lot of these positions are gratuity based and that this is the industry standard.”

After learning this week about the wages at the airport, Mayor Jane Campbell said the city, which owns the airport, is investigating.

“I had no idea they were not making minimum wage at the airport,” she said. “I’m sure patrons at the airport have no idea that there is an expectation that they should tip. I didn’t even know.”

Campbell said a Continental spokesperson claimed to know nothing about it, either.

“They are on the case,” Campbell said. “Continental has agreed to work with the subcontractor and told them we have got to get this fixed.”

The U.S. Department of Labor is also investigating, a spokesman said.

So far, FSS is unrepentant.

“It’s a shame, really, to focus on the $3.50 people when most of our employees make more,” general manager Mark Nichols said. “Some companies out there pay only $2.13 an hour.”

For the record, their electric-cart drivers make a whopping $4.50 an hour.

Nichols insisted most airline passengers know to tip. When I told him that only 10 percent of more than two hundred passengers I interviewed said they knew this, he scoffed.

“I’d say seventy percent of passengers know to tip,” he said.

Is he right? You tell me.