Airline Drops Gratuity Ban And Curbside Fee, But Adds Another
In Its Place
Bowing to pressure
Friday from some of its lowest-paid workers, American Airlines
agreed to drop a $2-per-bag fee for check-in service curbside at
airports around the United States as well as the lift of a ban on
tips for skycaps at Logan International Airport.
Skycaps for American at Logan agreed to drop a federal claim in
exchange. As ANN reported, that claim
accused the airline of retaliating against the skycaps for their
win in a recent lawsuit against American by imposing the ban on
tips as of May 1.
According to the Boston Globe, last month a jury in US District
Court in Boston awarded $325,000 to a group of nine current and
former skycaps about for tips they lost when the airline
implemented the curbside baggage fee in September 2005.
Drafted in the corridor of a federal courthouse by lawyers for
each sides to avoid a court hearing on the tips ban, Friday's
agreement appeased skycaps who complained their income has
decreased due to the $2 fee and the drought of additional income
from gratuities.
"I feel vindicated," said Don DiFiore, a 25 year veteran
American skycap at Logan to the Globe. "We've gotten rid of the
$2-a-bag charge, and we're going to have some language on the sign
[at the curb] saying tipping is allowed now."
The concessions will take effect on June 15.
Other skycaps feel the airline merely found another way to
offset the $2 baggage fee by adding a larger fee -- namely,
American's recently announcement of an additional $15 for many
passengers to check in a single piece of luggage at either curbside
or within the terminal. The fee follows an earlier decision by the
airline to join the trend among other US carriers to charge $25 to
check a second piece of luggage as a measure to help defray the
costs incurred by rising fuel prices.
"They're making seven times as much" with the new $15 fee than
the airline did with the $2 fee, said Tony Pasuy, another longtime
American skycap. "Why do they need to nickel and dime the
passengers when they're making seven times as much?"
The agreement does not
address whether American skycaps in Boston will get to keep raises
in hourly wages started after the curbside fees went into effect.
After the tips ban began, the airline promised them another
raise.
Tim Smith, a spokesman for American, told the Globe he does not
know whether the airline will roll back the hourly wages as a
result of the concessions. When American established the curbside
fees, its Texas-based subcontractor, G2 Secure Staff, raised the
wages of skycaps from $2.63 to $5.15 an hour. Most of the skycaps
were promised a raise to $12 an hour when the tips ban went into
effect.
The agreement will also not stop other legal actions currently
in process. Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer for the skycaps, is
pursuing another pending class-action suit on behalf of American
skycaps in airports across the US Similar to the suit filed and won
by skycaps in Boston, American skycaps elsewhere contend that they
lost tips when $2 curbside baggage fees took effect three years
ago.
"We urge the airlines not to continue the $2-per-bag charge,
which passengers mistake as the skycaps' tips," she said.