1,200 Airport Workers in New York Area Abruptly Laid Off With No Severance

With air travel in free fall as the coronavirus pandemic worsens across the country, thousands of workers like Campos have been laid off from their jobs at the major airports that serve New York City.

More than 1,200 of these laid-off workers were employed in restaurants and stores operated by OTG at La Guardia, Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports, according to the union that represents them, Unite Here Local 100.

OTG said the closings and layoffs were necessary because of the travel restrictions that had virtually grounded airlines. One of its senior executives is Lawrence Schwartz, a close ally of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“You can’t pay people” when the company is taking in very little revenue, said Schwartz.

“The airports are dead,” he added. “No one’s flying.”

OTG, one of the biggest operators of airport concessions in New York, informed its workers that they would receive no severance, and that their health insurance would lapse March 31.

Many workers said they resented the way OTG handled the layoffs.

Edith Muzquiz, a bartender in Terminal C at Newark Liberty, said she was called into a meeting in an OTG restaurant there at 11 p.m. Monday and told, along with a few dozen other employees, that they were being laid off immediately.

She said they were escorted out and told to surrender their badges.

On Wednesday, she received an official notice from OTG that said, “You should consider your layoff to be permanent as the situation is unprecedented and the effects are unknown.”

The notice went on to say that “OTG is not offering severance packages, however due to the impact the COVID-19 is having on the nation, many local governments are offering additional assistance to impaired workers.”

Muzquiz, who had worked for OTG in the airport for five years, said she understood the predicament the company was in, but she took issue with the message and the way it was delivered: a curt dismissal that offered no compensation or benefits to help employees left jobless in an economy that is cratering.

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“This isn’t our first rodeo with OTG,” she added. “How they treat their employees is not right.”

Campos, 57, agreed that the way that OTG treated its workers was “very not fair.”

Campos, who for the past eight years had served customers at OTG’s Prime Tavern in Terminal D, said she was especially worried about the company’s newer workers who were let go with no paid time off or accumulated sick days to use.

“You run out of your sick pay, you don’t get anything,” she said. “You walk out of there with nothing.”

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Waves of workers at airports across the country are losing their jobs as travelers evaporate, but some companies are offering their employees a financial lifeline, including extending their health care coverage.

Many restaurants and shops in once bustling airport terminals have closed with business essentially having come to a standstill.

Arthur Phillips, a spokesman for Unite Here Local 100, said the union estimated that at least 2,400 of its members had been laid off from jobs in concessions or catering at the three airports that serve New York City.

He said about 1,280 of them had worked for OTG — about 700 at Newark Liberty and the balance at La Guardia and in two terminals at Kennedy. In addition to the OTG workers, about 650 other members of the union have been laid off at the airports, he said.

Other airport concessionaires, Phillips said, have been more generous to laid-off workers.

Hudson Group, which operates Hudson News stores in many airports, was extending health insurance for two months, he said. LSG Sky Chefs, the largest airline-catering company in the country, agreed to extend health insurance benefits for three months, he said.

Schwartz said that OTG was “in financial-survival mode” and that he and other executives were taking pay cuts of 50% and would have to forgo bonuses. Schwartz, OTG’s chief strategy officer, is also a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, a position he was appointed to by Cuomo.

Schwartz said OTG had been “very compassionate” and was “trying to be very fair.”

He said he understood how upset the company’s workers were but explained that the company could not afford to provide severance pay or benefits.

“Would we love to continue providing benefits? Yes,” Schwartz said. “We feel terrible about what’s going on, but we’re being forced into it.”

Other unionized workers at the airports also were laid off in large numbers this past week, including porters and airplane cleaning crews. Notices from some of their employers showed that they, too, were offering no pay or extended health benefits.

Kyle Bragg, the president of Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents thousands of workers at the airports, called on airlines to share some of the $60 billion in federal aid they have requested.

“The contracted airport workers receive nothing,” Bragg said. “They earn the least, yet risk themselves the most. Many lack health care to even care for themselves in the face of this pandemic.”

Some operators of stores and restaurants at the airports have similarly sought relief from their rent as the coronavirus pandemic has wiped out their revenue.

The three airports are operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is jointly controlled by Cuomo and the governor of New Jersey, Philip Murphy. A Port Authority spokesman said the agency had tried to ensure that some shops stayed open to serve travelers.

Unite Here has asked the Port Authority not to extend that relief to airport businesses unless they in turn provide aid to laid-off workers.

“We would strongly suggest that rent relief only be granted when concessionaires are extending health benefits to all their workers at the airports,” Phillips said.

The Port Authority’s executive director, Rick Cotton, who has been working from his Manhattan home since he tested positive for the coronavirus, could not be reached for comment.

The Port Authority responded to the workers’ complaints with a statement, saying, “We are acutely aware of the distress on airport workers who have been laid off or may be laid off as a result of the mounting impact on airport concessionaires due to COVID-19.”

“We recognize the need for emergency action,’’ the agency added. “We made clear in our ask to the U.S. Congress the need for federal aid in this crisis. We will soon be determining near-term actions to address this profound crisis at the airports.”

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In a letter to the congressional delegations from the two states Thursday, Cotton and the Port Authority’s chairman, Kevin O’Toole, said “our tenants are requesting fiscal relief from rents and charges as their industries contract under the strain of this pandemic.”

They asked for $1.9 billion in federal aid and said that passenger volumes at the airports had fallen by more than 50% and “threaten to continue to decline.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .