SEATown Leads Pay Hike, Now Port of NY Requesting Increases

Just one week after The News launched its Fair Pay campaign, the Port Authority of NY on Tuesday ordered an immediate pay hike for airport workers toiling in jobs at or near the minimum wage.
Patrick Foye, executive director of the bistate agency, sent a letter Tuesday night to major airlines demanding that workers making $9 an hour or less receive an immediate $1-per-hour increase in their base wages, with an eventual phase-in to $10.10 an hour.

He also directed the airlines to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a paid holiday for airport workers, and grant the benefit retroactive to this year’s MLK Day, which fell on Jan. 20.
“Providing an improved wage and benefits package to the thousands of hardworking men and women that make our airport systems the largest in the country is something that cannot wait,” Foye, an appointee of Gov. Cuomo’s, wrote the CEOs of Delta, JetBlue, American and United airlines.

The directive covers 8,000 workers at Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. It does not cover 4,000 employees at Newark Airport