It would be easy to mistake Gian Lopez, 22, for a Delta Air Lines employee. After all, for 40 hours each week he works alongside Delta employees and handles bags belonging to Delta passengers. There is just one thing that sets him apart: his uniform.

“Delta is Delta. We are contractors. We wear red, they wear blue,” says Lopez, who works for Aviation Safeguards, a Delta contractor.

At the peak of winter, when freezing temperatures are normal for New York City, the airline contractors’ employees don’t just see the difference in the uniforms – they feel it.

They insist that unlike the airlines’ employees, they don’t have weather-appropriate uniforms, heaters or break rooms to warm up in. They make as little as $9 an hour, have no benefits and are without a union. That isn’t for a lack of trying. Months ago, thousands of contractors’ employees voted to be represented by 32BJ Service Employee International Union. Their employers are yet to negotiate a contract, however, and the employees have been left wishing for the blue Delta uniforms, which they insist are warmer.

Lopez says his main post is in the Delta’s baggage area, where he works on the ramp and scans bags. It looks like a warehouse with big doors open at all times, so carts ferrying bags can come and go.

OSHA recommendations

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) names baggage handlers as one of the professions affected by cold weather. In advice for employers on how to protect employees from the cold, the OSHA recommends “frequent short breaks in warm, dry areas, to allow the body to warm up” and “engineering controls such as radiant heaters”.

When the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health interviewed airport workers in August and September 2014, it found that “cabin cleaners and baggage handlers alike consistently reported working in extreme cold”. The report went on to note that workers were required to wear company-provided clothing, which often was not enough to keep them warm.

“I have to wear the uniform,” Lopez says. “I have to wear their coats and their coats are very cheap and they don’t keep me very warm at all.” The only additional layers he is allowed to wear are the thermals he puts on underneath the uniform at the beginning of every shift and an extra black sweater he can wear under his jacket.

“[Delta employees] have a totally different uniform,” he says. “Their uniform is very warm because they have a suit that keeps them from the cold, rain, everything.”

Contractors are not unaware of the conditions that their workers face.

“They know how cold it gets down there,” Lopez says of his employer, Aviation Safeguards. “I asked them for a heater because I am not the only company down there. I am alongside Delta but Delta workers, they have their own heater. They have a break room with heat. They have heat pipes. I requested a heater and they never got it for me.”

His requests for heaters have gone unanswered for a second year in a row, he says. He is technically not allowed in the Delta’s break room, which is only for the airline’s employees. Not that that has stopped him before.

“What I do to get warm is I enter Delta’s break room real quick to heat up and then come back to my position, because I can’t leave my position,” he admits.

It’s too hot

The problem doesn’t persist just in the winter. In the summer, the fan above Lopez’s work station doesn’t work and he is forced to work in temperatures as high as 97F.

“If it’s hot outside, it’s burning inside. If it’s cold outside, it’s freezing inside,” Lopez says.

Hector Figueroa, president of 32BJ Service Employee International Union, told the Guardian: “These poverty-wage airport workers aren’t provided the materials or equipment they need to be protected from harsh weather conditions and the winter cold. They deserve the basic resources that would make their jobs safe.”

He added that airlines working with contractors and the Port Authority should demand that the contractors comply with OSHA and Federal Aviation Administration standards.

Delta Air Lines declined to comment, referring all questions directly to Aviation Safeguards. “As the employer, they are best positioned to answer your questions,” the airline said.

Aviation Safeguards, part of Command Security Corporation, did not respond to requests for comment.

Lopez has spoken publicly about the shortcomings of his employers. In mid-January, he joined coworkers in a protest that blocked the 94th Street bridge leading to LaGuardia airport. While there he spoke to reporters about living on $9 an hour, having to rely on food stamps and subsidized housing. At the end of the month, the Port Authority issued an order that airline workers’ pay be raised to $10.10 an hour.



The protest – like those organized in November to demand health benefits and those organized in October to protest unsafe working conditions related to the Ebola outbreak – was organized by 32BJ SEIU.

Still waiting on a contract

While the union does not currently represent the workers, it is technically protecting their interests. In May 2014, 3,800 workers employed by contractors at John F Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty airports voted to join the union. They hoped it would help them obtain better pay, benefits and improve working conditions.

Eight months later, the contractors have yet to agree to contract negotiations, says 32BJ SEIU. Initially, the union hoped to negotiate a contract by the end of the summer, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That is not to say that all complaints received by the contractors have gone unaddressed.

Julissa Melo works as a customer service agent overseeing bags self-checked at American Airlines kiosks. Her employer is an American Airlines contractor, PrimeFlight Aviation Services. She says that about three weeks ago her working station was “super cold”.

“We all complained – all of my coworkers – to our supervisor,” says Melo. “Now it’s getting a little better. It’s not as cold as it used to be.”

PrimeFlight employees are also only allowed to wear uniforms provided to them. While Melo is no longer as cold, she still worries about her coworkers who work as skycaps.

“Their stations are outside. They are still working in a freezing cold,” she says.

PrimeFlight did not respond to requests for comment.