Squeezed between cash-strapped airlines and tight-fisted passengers, the nation’s skycaps are feeling the pinch — and fighting back.
Many passengers have stopped tipping the skycaps since the airlines imposed a $2 fee for curbside baggage handling, according to the familiar porters at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Now they have joined a class-action lawsuit to demand compensation for the lost income.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Reagan Airport skycaps against US Airways and Prime Flight Aviation Services Inc., which has a contract to provide skycaps to the airline.
Airlines started imposing the $2-per-bag fee over the past three years as they scrape for revenue to fight tough competition. US Airways imposed its fee last year.
Passengers responded by reducing or eliminating the tips they paid skycaps, who say they commonly lose as much as $80 per day compared with what they used to earn before the curbside baggage fees were imposed.
Those fees go to the airlines or contractors who hire the skycaps.
“You don’t make nothing,” John Agyemang, a Reagan Airport skycap, said yesterday during a drizzly afternoon in Arlington.
Skycaps who heave bags on and off carts hope passengers pay a tip on top of the $2 fee. Otherwise, they say, they must get by on wages of as little as $2.83 per hour.
Albert Brew, a skycap at the US Airways terminal, said his daily tip income has dropped from an average of more than $100 a day to about $35 a day since airlines started charging the fee.
One of his friends quit his skycap job after his tip income fell. Others have taken their complaint to court — specifically U.S. District Court in Boston, which awarded $325,000 to a group of nine American Airlines skycaps last month.
That court ruling spawned a wave of similar lawsuits nationwide.
Mr. Brew said he hopes the US Airways skycaps win their lawsuit so he can send more money back to his wife and four children in Ghana. He lives alone in Alexandria and has worked as a skycap for 2½ years. He said he sometimes feels powerless to replace his lost tip income.
“It’s the company’s decision,” he said. “You can’t sit at home. You have to work.”
Prime Flight Aviation Services officials declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
The lawsuit on behalf of US Airways’ skycaps at Reagan Airport was filed in the name of skycap Wilmer Preston. It is part of a larger lawsuit representing more than 3,000 skycaps nationwide.
“Skycaps have no union, health care or benefits, thus relying on tips to pay for these necessities,” said their attorneys at Mikel Jones Law Firm in Philadelphia.
Prime Flight Aviation Services “has made no efforts to compensate skycaps for the monetary loss,” the law firm said Wednesday.
Its lawsuit against US Airways accuses the airline and Prime Flight of violating federal minimum-wage laws by depriving skycaps of tip income. The minimum wage is $5.85 per hour.
It also says the companies interfered with the skycaps’ contractual relations and unjustly enriched themselves at the expense of the workers. They want compensation for all wages, tips and service charges they say they should have received.
“Skycaps are not employed by US Airways,” said Michelle Mohr, the airline’s spokeswoman. “They’re employed by an outside vendor.”
She declined further comment because of the pending lawsuit, which was filed April 11 in the same Boston court that ruled for the American Airlines skycaps.
Skycaps for JetBlue Airways also are suing over lost income from the check-in fees.
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