The COWC, the Columbus Building Trades Council and the Central Ohio Labor Council urged the Columbus Regional Airport Authority Board (CRAA) to ensure a comprehensive community benefits agreement for the new terminal project at John Glenn Columbus International Airport.
The COWC spoke at the CRAA Board Meeting on Tuesday, February 27 to advocate for a comprehensive community benefit agreement for ALL workers building the new airport terminal.
Isbel Alvarado, our Case Manager, spoke on behalf of the Central Ohio Worker Center and the many low-wage and immigrant workers the COWC represents. We provided the CRAA with alarming statistics of the Franklin County workers we assist on wage theft and other workplace issues.
Sixty percent of the cases we received were related to wage theft, and 40 percent were related to other workplace issues like injuries, accidents in the workplace, discrimination, and immigrant small business owners not being paid at all for the construction work they performed. 90% of the workers who contacted us last year were workers of color or immigrants, and 99% of the total number of workers who contacted the center experiencing wage theft or any other workplace violation are NOT part of a union. We also know that 60% of wage theft victims nationally are women.
We explained to CRAA that a community benefits agreement with a grievance procedure that covers all workers and includes access to worker representatives to assist them is the only effective option for the workers we represent, the low-wage and immigrant workers in our community, who are disproportionately workers of color, women, and immigrants.
Put yourself for a moment in the situation of a worker not being paid properly or experiencing any type of workplace rights violation. Imagine your only option is to rely on the employer or general contractor who violated rights, who may have been a bad actor before, to do the right thing. Imagine the fear, the temptation to say nothing, and to keep your head down. Relying on an understaffed and under-resourced government office is not an effective option. Cases can take years to resolve, and there is the fear of retaliation.
We also raised our concerns of the potential exclusion of some contractors and how it will harm the workers we represent.
If contractors are excluded or allowed to opt-out of a comprehensive community benefits agreement, it will harm the workers we represent; if some workers are excluded from a comprehensive community benefits agreement, it will most likely be workers of color, immigrant workers, and women workers who are most affected.
We urge the CRAA to ensure a comprehensive community benefits agreement for the new terminal project at John Glenn International Airport.
The workers who build the new airport terminal and a piece of Columbus history deserve the same strong workplace protections regardless of who they are, where they came from, and who they work for.