I Clean the Airplane Cabin After You Get Off. We Need to Talk

For many, the holiday season evokes a sense of joy and excitement for travel and quality time with loved ones. But it can also bring the exact opposite—immense stress—especially when you work at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), one of the nation’s top 10 busiest airports.

I’m a cabin cleaner at PHX, where I clean and do security sweeps of plane cabins overnight to ensure they’re safe for passengers. I’m one of the hundreds of blue-collar airport service workers who help Arizonans get to their destination safely and on time. We cabin cleaners also ensure that passengers are flying in planes that are clear of bombs, knives, or other security threats. It’s crucial work that I don’t take lightly. But between the short staffing, poverty wages, and lack of accessible benefits—not to mention last summer’s extreme heat—my coworkers and I are reaching a breaking point.

Travelers are reaching a breaking point too, and rightfully so. They’re frustrated with the long lines, flight delays, lost baggage, and outright chaos that have become a common part of the travel experience.

That’s why my coworkers and I have been raising public demands for Arizona’s congressional delegation to vote for the Good Jobs for Good Airports minimum wage and benefit standards when they reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the coming months. It should write in those minimum standards for workers like us, because we’re the foundation of the entire air travel system.

I’m counting on our members of Congress to deliver better wages, affordable benefits, and paid time off for the airport service workers who help everyone get where they’re going.

We need action from Congress because the current system isn’t working for anyone other than airline executives. Major airlines and their contractors helped create this dysfunction by failing to ensure living wages and affordable benefits for service workers like me. Because of this, high turnover is leading to staffing shortages that contribute to your lost bag or delayed flight. While major airlines boast of record revenues—for American Airlines, it’s upwards of $14 billion last quarter—wages for the Black, brown and immigrant-powered airport service workforce remain stagnant, barely enough to make ends meet.

Right now, my colleagues and I are bracing for impending holiday travel dysfunction after a brutal summer of inhumane working conditions and grueling heat—which extended well into the Fall. Phoenix set a new total heat record this year, reaching 54 days of 110 degrees or higher in 2023, including the hottest recorded September in our state’s history. October also saw temperatures that were “well above normal.” This summer, I briefly lost consciousness after working for hours in the extreme heat without the ability to take a water break. Conditions like this make it all the more outrageous that many of us don’t have affordable health care coverage.

There is no reprieve—and we’re fed up.

The irony isn’t lost on us that while airport service workers ensure the safety and comfort of millions of travelers, our own safety net is nonexistent. It also doesn’t go unnoticed that we are the gateway for travelers to get home to their families, yet many of us are denied paid time off to spend with our families. We make up more than one in three workers in the air travel industry, and we deserve nothing less than fair pay and benefits like affordable health care and PTO.

Our years are split between grueling heat and working through the holiday chaos because we can’t miss a paycheck. There is no reprieve—and we’re fed up. That’s why I’m fighting alongside my coworkers and airport service workers across the country to demand Congress step up and hold airlines accountable to passengers and workers alike. They benefit from billions in public money, and now it’s time for Congress to make sure that money fuels better jobs and quality service with wage and benefit standards for the airport service workers who help keep our travel system safe, clean, and functioning.

I’m counting on our members of Congress to deliver better wages, affordable benefits, and paid time off for the airport service workers who help everyone get where they’re going. That means including the Good Jobs for Good Airports wage and benefit standards as part of the FAA Reauthorization. That’s how they’ll help fix what’s broken in U.S. air travel.

On behalf of travelers and the working people at the foundation of our travel system, we need change. We can’t afford to wait any longer.